Erik and the XMen
by eepybird
Summary: The Phantom of the Opera suddenly finds himself in the 21st century, where the Xmen take him in until they can figure out how to return him to his novel. The results are odd, to say the least...
1. Chapter 1: The first chapter

Disclaimer: Alanna and George belong to Tamora Pierce, Erik belongs to Leroux, and I don't own any of the X-men except the ones you don't recognize.

**CHAPTER 1**: In which several characters are introduced

Krista pulled on her wetsuit and donned her fake mermaid tail. The gypsy caravan had just pulled into the outskirts of another town and it was time to play Robin Hood (cough) rob the local moneybags blind (cough). Krista loved being a part of the freak show, one of the last of its kind. The Information Age was finally starting to arrive in this previously overlooked part of the world. She checked the water filter one last time, gave her partner, George, the thumbs-up, and slipped into her tank.

George started letting ticket-holders into the tent. Krista spotted their first target almost immediately. His wallet was so fat that it was putting strain on his back pocket. Fat Wallet stood rooted like a deer in a Hummer's headlights while his tiny brain struggled to deny Krista's existence. To Krista's delight, Fat Wallet decided to hold his breath and wait for her to surface for air, which would prove her to be a fake. Krista, of course, was not going to surface. Eventually Fat Wallet keeled over from lack of oxygen, and George gently relieved him of his wallet and not-so-gently rolled him outside. The same thing happened to Hippo, Mr. Striped-pants, Mr. Walrus, Mrs. Walrus, and Pocketbook. Rich people were hopelessly stupid.

The common people, on the other hand, were delighted to discover that Krista really could breathe water, mostly because it meant that everything the rich people had ever told them was wrong. The raggedy little kids pressed their noses right up to the tank and waved. Krista winked at a little girl and pointed to her pocket. The girl put her hand in her pocket and her eyes grew as wide as plates when she found a real American twenty-dollar bill. George had a soft spot for little kids, though he'd never admit it.

All too soon it was time to close up. Krista climbed out of her tank and sighed, blowing the last of the water out of the blowhole on her back.

"Hey, watch it!"

Alanna chose the wrong moment to enter the tent and ended up getting royally doused. George failed spectacularly to cover a grin as he handed her a towel. Alanna glowered. George tweaked her nose. Krista swiped the towel while the redhead was busy plotting dire revenge and got up to change back into street clothes.

"Krista, don't go! I want to introduce you to the latest member of our motley crew," Alanna called. "Just to warn you, though, his face could take some getting used to. We're thinking of billing him as the 'Living Corpse.'" With that, she grabbed Krista by the hand and dragged her outside. A few men were busy pulling the sleeping tents out of the blue Jeep. They waved the girls on to a new tent over by the old pickup truck.

Stepping inside, the girls were temporarily blinded by the contrast between brilliant sunset and dark, musty tent. Krista paused, trying to blink away sunspots before realizing that the two glowing dots were actually the Living Corpse's eyes.

"I've brought company!" Alanna trumpeted as she stepped into the tent.

"SQUEEEEEEEEE!" Krista squealed as she happily fainted.

"Oh dear," said the Phantom of the Opera.

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Professor X woke up with a pounding headache, which is never a good thing for someone with immense psychic abilities. For some odd reason, headaches always made him start calculus problems using arbitrary numbers. This, of course, made the headache worse.

The headache had come from a psychic blast that sounded something like "Squeee!" Unfortunately Professor X is not particularly glompable, and so he didn't know what "squee" meant. He was worried that whoever sent it might be in trouble. He had to find her, but first he needed to find maybe fifty Aspirins and the antiderivative of 453 t minus 27 t squared.

The professor wheeled his way to the kitchen, squinting against the light. Rogue, Wolverine, and Jubilee were already there, scribbling frantically on pieces of paper. Professor X stopped to look at what Logan was doing. Logan had a look of sheer terror on his face and was mumbling, "How am I supposed to take an antiderivative of an imaginary number if I don't know what an antiderivative IS?"

Rogue, with a supreme effort, wrenched herself away from her paper, chanting a number softly as she searched through the top cabinet and brought down a bottle of Aspirin. She gave it to Professor X and immediately sat down to continue where she had left off.

The professor quickly downed the meds and started rubbing his temples. Very slowly, the girls' pencil skritchings slowed and then stopped. Wolverine growled and snapped his pencil between his teeth.

Professor X looked up and started trying to explain. "I got a very strong psychic message last night, you see, and.."

"I got a strong psychic message, too," Storm snapped from the doorway. "How am I supposed to SLEEP if I sit bolt upright at five in the morning shouting, '226 and one-half t squared minus 9 t cubed plus a constant that may or may not exist?'"

"Uh, sorry?" the professor offered.

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**A/N**: Hi! If you just read this chapter, I love you forever because I have a talent for totally escaping the notice of the general public. Please send a review so that I know I'm not alone in the world. Any suggestions are extremely welcome, considering I'm a newbie (hey, everyone was a newbie at some point) and I'm lucky I figured out how to post this thing. I would appreciate any tidbits about the X-men, too.


	2. Chapter 2: What's in a name?

Disclaimer: Krista is the only character I own.

**CHAPTER 2**: In which Erik acquires several names.

In Krista's mind, she was back in the States again, back in the AP French class she took before she learned that she was a mutant. The teacher put a French tape in the player and motioned for them to listen silently. Krista shut her eyes as she deciphered the jumble of vowels floating across the room.

"I should have known," a silky voice lamented _en francais_. "I'm so hideous that grown men have fainted at the sight of me. The poor girl's heart practically stopped."

"I don't speak French," a tart voice replied, right in Krista's ear.

Krista's eyes popped open.

"And I wish you wouldn't be so melodramatic," Alanna continued briskly as she poured three cups of tea and handed one to the huddled black lump in the corner of the tent.

"I'm fine, really," Krista said loudly in French. "Really, Erik, calm down."

"Erik?" the Phantom asked, twisting to look behind him.

"I don't speak French," Alanna repeated with a slight growl, "so could someone PLEASE tell me what's going on?"

"You know," Krista said in English. "Erik. It's your name."

"No, it's not," Erik insisted.

"The Angel of Music? The Phantom of the Opera? O.G.? Opera Ghost? Angel of Death? Don't any of these work for you?"

Eloquent silence. There would have been crickets, but it was too cold out for that kind of thing.

"Never mind. I seem to have mistaken you for someone else. What is your real name?"

"I... I don't seem to have one," the dark one confessed. "I have been known as the Shah-in-shah's magician, but before that I never had a title."

"You ARE Erik!" Krista shrieked.

"No, I'm not, and you are starting to annoy me."

"Well, you are now. Come on. You can't go around your whole life referring to yourself as the 'Living Corpse' or the shah-in-shah's whatever, can you?"

Erik's shrug suggested that he intended to do just that.

"Too bad," Krista said as she jumped to her feet. She grabbed her teacup out of Alanna's hand and tapped Erik on the shoulders with it, managing not to spill too much as he jerked back in surprise. "I hereby dub thee Erik, and I permit everyone to call you by this name until you have no choice but to accept it."

"Wait a second," Alanna said, finally cottoning on. "You said that he was the Phantom of the Opera? As in the opera that you saw just before you left the States, that you rambled about for weeks and would not stop singing during setup until I had to wallop you over the head with a broom?"

"Actually, the broom song was from Jekyll and Hyde."

"Whatever."

"I'm not a phantom of an opera," Erik said. "I'm an architect. There aren't any operas in Mazenderan. They have... other entertainments."

"Wait, you mean you haven't gotten to France yet? How do you know French? Never mind, you grew up near Rouen. That wasn't the question anyway. Here it comes. How did you miss out on the entire story?" Krista demanded.

Erik and Alanna were both starting to back away slowly, but Krista was actually on to something very important. Unfortunately, answers would not be forthcoming for at least another chapter, for at that very moment a large silver SHINY high-tech jet landed next to the caravan, out from which popped several people in black leather outfits, humming the X-men theme song.

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**A/N**: This is where I had a shout-out to my first two reviewers, until someone said that the moderators would smack me with a banhammer.


	3. Chapter 3: This is not the Munich Circus

Disclaimer: I don't own X-men, POTO, or the Lioness series, but I still warp them and publish them on this site.

**CHAPTER 3:** In which someone is Punjabbed, and fanfictions are discussed

The troupe in black, my dear readers, is the X-men (specifically Professor X, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, and Storm. Scott is in charge at the mansion.) This may seem obvious, but for our characters, it wasn't.

Alanna, who had lived with the gypsy caravan for almost all of her life, thought that they were Russain thugs. She shifted slightly and drew her amythest-topped sword behind her back.

Erik, who had lived in the past fiction for almost all of his life, thought that they were from a different planet, especially since he had never seen a jet before. He shifted slightly and readied his Punjab lasso behind his back.

Krista, who had lived in the States for 27 years and the gypsy camp for two, (yes, she's older than most phictional phans, but she's still a phangirl at heart), knew perfectly well who they were, having watched the movies and the local news that had inspired them. She shifted slightly and turned on her digital camera behind her back.

George, who had been a thief-lord for almost all of his life, thought that they were threatening his friends and didn't even bother shifting slightly. He pulled out two of his hidden daggers in midair as he pounced towards Logan's head.

At this point several things happened at once. Logan's claws shot out of his fists as he turned to strike George. George, still in midair, parried the blow and used its force to cartwheel back a safe distance, knocking over Storm, who was still charging up a gust of wind. Alanna came charging, swinging her sword. Krista glomped Kurt. Things were going badly for the X-men until the Professor shouted, "STOP!"

Everyone froze except for Logan, who made a slight coughing sound and keeled over. Seven heads turned to look. Erik stood behind him, winding up the Punjab lasso with a shadow of a smile on his face.

Krista suddenly noticed that this version of Erik was only in his late teens. He had pimples. This put a sudden damper on her plans, for although the 35-ish version of Erik might go for 17-ish girls, 29-ish Krista did not go for 17-ish boys.

"Aaack, my neck! Graaaaargh!" Logan burbled as he unsteadily started to stand back up. Erik shrieked with surprise and rage and promptly Punjabbed him again. Logan turned red, then white, then blue, and fell over dead. A few seconds later, he was back on his feet.

"Look here, punk," he snarled as Erik frantically tightened the noose once more. He continued trying to talk as Erik killed him several times.

"Who do you --" (Punjab)

"think you are --" (Punjab)

This was endlessly amusing, and could have carried on for much longer if Kurt had not stepped forward with an expression of awe on his face. Erik regarded him curiously as he hauled on the noose. The blue one was almost as hideous as himself, he thought, with odd hands and a tail. Erik would have thought him a demon if he hadn't been wearing the black leather outfit, which wasn't exactly conventional demon-garb in his time. (Now, of course, we know better.)

"Professor," Kurt breathed in an adorable accent that I dare not attempt, "this man is just as I had imagined the Living Corpse to be." He hurried on, not noticing the stunned expressions of those around him or Logan's attempt to loosen the noose. "In the Munich Circus, where I was the Incredible Nightcrawler, they told stories late at night of a man who was in the very same circus hundreds of years ago. He performed stunning feats of magic and legerdemain and he was the first—and the best—ventriloquist. The stories all said that he was called the Living Corpse because his face resembled a skull, and he always carried a strange lasso."

Erik jerked the strange lasso, dragging Logan back just as he was about to crawl off. "The man you speak of is myself, monsieur," he said, and bit his lip, thinking. "Though I cannot see how I featured in a story from hundreds of years ago," his voice continued, echoing out of the air next to Kurt's (slightly pointed) left ear.

Krista squeed slightly. Even 17-ish phantoms are still phantoms, especially when they commit phantomly acts. "I think I know what's going on," she said once she was vaguely under control. "Erik--" ("My name is NOT Erik," Erik attempted in the feeble hope that she would give it up) "the reason you're so young and relatively angstless is that you were somehow brought forward in time just after you left Mazenderan. My guess is that we are currently inside a fanfic, where such things are possible."

"Oh!" said George. "I know about those."

"You DO?" Alanna asked, incredulously raising one eyebrow.

"I do," George replied, smirking just a bit. "Lots of girls get together and write their own interpretations of their favorite stories. Some guys do it too. I found it on that Internet thing that Krista was trying to explain."

"How?" Alanna demanded.

"Remember the moneybagger who looked like a walrus? He had somehow managed to get a laptop cheap off the black market. It was in that big tote bag. Of course, it is not there anymore." George proudly displayed his prize. Alanna whistled and wondered how much they could get for it. George wanted to keep it, and the two of them were soon in a minor argument that was mostly ignored by everyone else.

"The problem," Krista explained to the stunned and blinking X-men, "is that if I'm right, there is a higher being controlling our lives at this very moment, and whoever it is pulled Erik out of his own time before his story could be completed. He's actually supposed to do something very important, which will make him famous, or infamous, really."

"This is serious," Professor X said, wheeling forward to pry Erik's fingers from Logan's neck. "Time is not something to be messed with."

"Authoresses are not to be messed with either," Krista mentioned. "Because we are inside a story, anything that she writes happens in our world. It would be best not to anger her, but I have to say that I have no idea what she's thinking." She flinched, waiting for the thunder and earthquakes. Instead, a slinky dropped out of the sky and slinked around a few times.

"Well!" the professor said, after they had sufficiently questioned the sanity of their Authoress. "We have some of the most advanced technology and research in the world. I think that, for as long as Mr. Erik needs to take to solve his time problem, we can house him at the mansion."

"Can we trust him?" Storm asked, speaking for the first time. "And, Professor, what about the mission?"

"If you MUST call me Erik, call me Erik, not 'Mr. Erik,'" Erik snapped. Then he asked, "What mission?"

"Indeed!" the Professor remarked. "As you may have guessed, these are the X-men."

This did not meet with the proper amount of recognition.

"We are all mutants," Professor X explained. George and Alanna nodded. Erik blinked uncertainly, but no one could tell. "I run a school for young mutants that made the news recently. Anyway. A mutant sent me an indecipherable psychic message and we were worried about her," the Professor said. He wheeled closer to Krista, gazed at her with his most serious and stern face, and asked, "What, exactly, does 'Squee' mean?"

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**A/N**: I hope you all like the latest chapter. Is it too long? Were the first ones too short? Do you mind that Erik is (temporarily and briefly!) young and pimply? Then please review! I feed on reviews and Medjool dates! There is a **cameo opportunity** as of right now. Even though I know I have very few readers, I'd like to fill out the ranks of Mutant High. Just review and tell me your element and your favorite superpower. In the future, expect me to update at least once a week.


	4. Chapter 4: Home sweet home

Disclaimer: Don't own POTO, X-Men, or Tortall.

CHAPTER 4: In which Mutant High is undergoing construction

After Krista and Alanna were done laughing in the professor's face, George took mercy upon him and explained that "Squee" was a sort of feminine battlecry.

"Like this!" Krista explained. "SQUEEE!" she squealed, launching herself upon Kurt.

"That there is known as glomping," Alanna added helpfully as Kurt tried teleporting away, only to find that Krista was holding on too tightly to be shaken off.

"Well!" said the Professor, considerably relieved. "If you aren't in any trouble, then I guess we'll be on our way!"

At this point Krista noted that, seeing as she was the only one who knew who Erik was, she should help the X-men figure out how to return him to his time. Storm and Wolverine didn't want Erik with them in the first place. Professor X insisted that Erik be returned to his own time. Erik, recognizing in Krista an ally who did not despise his face and who could speak French, decided to ignore the fact that she knew altogether too much about him and declared that he wanted Krista to go with them. The X-men decided to humor the cute little psycho, and so Krista and Erik were bundled onto the SHINY jet.

"I'll email you on George's laptop!" Krista hollered out the back door.

"Aha! That means I get to keep it!" George exulted. Then he and Alanna headed over to the firepit for dinner, and generally got on with their normal lives, glad that the Authoress was taking the plot far, far away. The slinky, however, they kept.

After a VERY tense, long plane trip, during which Erik wouldn't shut up about how cool it was to fly, and Kurt wouldn't shut up about the Munich circus, the crew arrived at the mansion. Krista mentally smacked herself for being surprised that it was under construction. Several large cranes circled the school, and a few mutants were helping to repair the damage done during the recent raid.

Erik suddenly grew very tense. There were so many people! Instinctively he reached up to resettle his mask, at which point he realized that it was gone. In his haste to escape execution through the strange door that the daroga had found, he had left his mask behind in Mazenderan. It had been fine before, when he was expected to be a freak in a freak show. Now he pulled his cape over his head and whimpered.

"It's okay," the professor said. "No one here is going to hate you."

"I will," Logan growled.

"Here, Erik," Krista said softly, rooting through the backpack she had packed with all her possessions and handing him something black and fuzzy. It looked like a hat with holes for the eyes and mouth. It looked just like his first mask, actually. Really, it was a ski mask, but he didn't know this, so he put it on as the jet touched earth.

As soon as the door opened, Logan bolted, headed for the gym to take out his frustrations in manly exercise. Storm rolled her eyes and went over to help with the construction team. As Krista, Kurt, and Erik stepped into the sunlight, a tall, purple-haired person skipped up.

"Shandou!" whoever it was cried, bouncing up and down and buzzing what Erik was surprised to note were wings. "Welcome to Mutant High! My name's Syen, but everyone here calls me Pixie. Professor, can I pleeeease please please give them the grand tour?"

Krista elbowed Erik in the side. "Erik, you're staring. Just because someone has huge dragonfly wings and antennae growing from their temples doesn't mean you can be rude."

At this point, despite the snowstorm outside, lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and the authoress frantically saved her document. During the interruption, Kurt mysteriously vanished, but that's okay, because he can do that kind of thing.

"Go ahead," the professor told Syen, relieved that he was now free to take a nap. "Erik, there is to be no violence against any of my students. I will know if anyone is rude to you, and you can trust me when I say that they will be reprimanded."

Erik nodded. Krista wasn't so sure that he would keep his word, but that was okay. She had learned pickpocketing from George, who was probably second only to Erik himself. The Punjab Lasso had found its way into her backpack while she was fishing out the ski mask, while Erik was too angsty to notice.

"I told you my name. Do you have names?" Pixie asked as they trouped towards the building.

"No," Erik replied.

"Sorry, I'm Krista," Krista said. "They call me the Mermaid because I can breathe water."

"Cool!" Pixie replied. "I can fly, as you probably can tell, and when I block my ears my antennae can pick up noise from, oh, at least twenty miles away. I know ALL the gossip in this school!"

"What?" Erik asked, stopping short.

Krista slapped her forehead. "You've heard this before, but no one ever explained! Being mutants means that we were born with strange abilities that usually manifest during adolescence. Call it a super power if you want. That's why no one here will think you look strange. We're all strange enough as it is. There are lots of mutants out there, but there are more normal people who don't understand us. We're mostly discriminated against. You should know what I mean, Erik."

"Erik, did you say?" Pixie buzzed. "You said you didn't have a name!"

"I don't," Erik snapped, glaring at Krista. "She gave me that name."

"He's a younger version of the Phantom of the Opera," Krista explained, on a hunch that Pixie would know who she meant.

"Skandara!" Pixie shrieked. No one really knew what that meant.

An Erik being glomped by a dragonfly is an interesting sight.

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**A/N:** Well, that's it for Chapter 4! I hope you all enjoyed this rather transitional chapter. Syen, I hope you like your cameo. It will continue for a few more chapters, but I need to know the answer to an embarrassing question: Is Pixie a guy or a girl? **Cameos are still available.** Fill in a review with your element, favorite superpower, gender, and general appearance. Anything you do not tell me will be invented, possibly at risk of your dignity. Note to **Mominator124:** you will get a cameo because I can't reply to reviews but I think you're cool, and I have need of a specific superpower. You can apply for a cameo, but the superpower is my choice (you'll like it.)


	5. Chapter 5: Erik meets Arik

Disclaimer: Among the many things I don't own are POTO, X-men, Harry Potter, and Star Trek.

CHAPTER 5: In which some things are ugly, and some are cute.

eepybird sat at her desk and stared at nothing in particular. The day was not going well. First a slinky had gotten tangled in her knitting, and now she had to figure out what to do with ­­­MetalMyerJason's cameo application. eepybird suspected he just wanted to throw a monkey wrench in her story, but she had promised to use all cameo applications. Briefly she considered making Arik a girl, since the gender hadn't been specified, but suddenly she received a flash of inspiration and figured out how to tie him in to the entire story if only she crossed her eyes at the section marked Power and misread it slightly.

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Fortunately for Pixie, Erik was distracted from thoughts of retribution by a monkey wrench, which fell from the ceiling and clanged loudly against the floor.

"Uh-oh..." Krista said to nobody in particular.

At that moment, a girl came out of an adjacent hallway, saw the trio, and sprinted over. "Arik!" she called. "I found your mask!" She danced up to Erik and started to pull off his ski mask. Erik howled with fury and made to lunge at her, but Krista grabbed Erik from behind and pinned his arms down. The new girl mistook this for glomping, so, unaware of the danger, she removed the mask.

Erik's face was less than pleasant to look at. His pale skin stretched over high cheekbones that made the sunken-ness of his eyes stand out, or rather in, all the more. It was true: his reverse-Marty-Feldman eyes couldn't be seen at all. The skin of the surrounding sockets absorbed any light reflecting off the sides of his eyes. If light bounced off his pupils, it would reflect at an angle narrow enough that his pupils could be seen; however, his pupils absorbed all of the light, because that's what pupils do.

Erik's nose was not missing, because that would cause record-setting sinus infections, but his nostrils were too deep in his face to be seen easily. (One could always try staring up his nose, but that would be rude as well as stupid.) Erik's patchy black hair hung in greasy, Severus-like clumps that did nothing to aid his pimple problem.

Having noted this, we now return to our regularly scheduled program.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!" Erik said, very calmly.

"Hey! You aren't Arik!" the new girl observed.

"Did somebody call my name?" came another voice as an extremely tall teenager stepped out of a classroom. Krista and Erik stared. The newcomer was also wearing a black ski mask. In fact, he was also wearing black dress pants and a white dress shirt—a perfect mirror of Erik's clothing.

"Wha? How? Who?" the girl asked, looking around. She suddenly noticed that Pixie was collapsed on the ground, laughing her head off. "What's going on?" the blond girl demanded, prodding the purple-haired girl to her feet.

"That, over there," Pixie managed between gasps, "is Arik the Freak. This is the real Erik... he got dragged out of his story..."

"Oh!" the blonde replied. "Sorry!" She was tempted to glomp Erik, but she sagely decided that he was about as stable as a pound of plutonium at the moment. "Hey, Arik, I found your mask!" She handed the latter object to the former.

Arik pulled off his ski mask, revealing an appearance at once similar to and completely opposing Erik's. He, too, lacked nasal features. His yellow, pupil-less eyes were sunken but visible. Unlike Erik, Arik had bony ridges above his eyes, like something out of Star Trek. What really set him apart, however, was his hair. His hair was light purple and long and it just about screamed ANIME! but politely refrained, because talking hair freaks people out.

Arik clapped his mask onto his face, and Krista slowly let go of Erik's arms.

"You, girl, give me back my mask," Erik commanded.

"My NAME is Raven, and I'll thank you to use it," came the tart reply, but the mask was handed over.

"No it's not, it's Maidenhair!" Pixie shrieked.

"My genius friend here," Maidenhair said, indicating Pixie, "noted that my hair is not raven-colored, and for a while I was known as Maiden of the Misnamed Hair. Now I'm just Maidenhair. Nicknames really stick around here."

"Is everything all right out here?" a woman asked authoritatively, coming out of Room 124 as she smoothed a Band-aid across her thumb.

"We've got new students!" Pixie trumpeted, dragging Krista and Erik forward. "Krista, Erik, meet the Mominator!"

"Uh, hi!" Krista said. Erik just wondered quietly to himself if he were quite sane.

"My name really isn't Mominator," Mominator said, "but ever since my youngest son came here to teach, it might as well be."

"Oh, Mominator, you cut your hand!" Maidenhair said, pointing to the Band-Aid. "I hope you didn't do it on purpose!"

"Her dark power," Arik explained quietly, startling everyone with his sudden speech, "is the ability to animate any object for as long as she wants—but it requires blood." (A/N: Sorry, but otherwise it would be magic, not a mutant ability.)

"Yeah..." Pixie said. "It's kind of unfortunate and gross. But she makes such pretty things! Don't be so morbid, Arik." Of course, this was like telling a lion to try eating cucumbers for breakfast. Arik merely raised an eyebrow.

"Of course I didn't cut myself," Mominator said in a no-nonsense tone. "There was a small accident: not much hurt besides my dignity. Of course, I can't let a drop of blood go to waste, so I animated my latest sculpture. Want to see him?"

She ushered them into the classroom and pointed to a small sculpture of a dragon in repose. "Shh, he's sleeping," Mominator said. Krista suddenly noticed that its sides were rising and falling and that minute puffs of smoke appeared on each exhale. "Don't worry," Mominator said. "He can't breathe fire any more than he can eat food. A renegade fire-breathing dragon is the last thing I need, especially after my dwarf-sculpture minions ran away. Isn't he cute? I'm going to call him Norbert."

Norbert was happily in REM-land, so after a few minutes spent admiring him the group decided, at Pixie's suggestion, to go see what was for lunch.

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**A/N**: Review, please! Character suggestions are very welcome. :-) I know Mominator's character needs work. If you really don't like the power, I can replace the character with someone else and give you a different cameo. The last thing I want to do is to alienate my small but admirably loyal fan base. You guys are great.

Erik is the Leroux version, as would have discovered when they enter the Leroux novel, if only you hadn't already been forewarned by this sentence. Mwah hah hah.


	6. Chapter 6: Uhoh

Disclaimer: I don't own anyone except Krista. In honor of Christmas (hey, I'm not a politician, I don't have to be politically correct), which has kindly delivered a weeklong holiday, this chapter features an obscure reference to Why The Sea Is Salt, a Scandinavian fairy tale that takes place on Christmas day.

**CHAPTER 6**: In which Erik eats something

The new cafeteria at Mutant High was rather depressing. Due to a generally poor design, it was two-thirds of the size of the old cafeteria. The nice thing was that the old round table design had been replaced with very long bench seats, so everyone could at least fit.

"Eat something," Mominator said for the third time, a lot more sharply than she had the first time. Erik attempted to placate her by eating a tiny morsel of his ham-and-cheese sandwich.

"You should listen to her," Storm said. "You're so frail." Krista was starting to warm up to her a bit. It was understandable that Storm had been so terse around Erik earlier; after all, he was a killer. Erik, however, had calmed down quite a bit (probably from shock) since his arrival.

Mominator, Krista, and Maidenhair were soon involved in a lively discussion of the best food to give to a sick person. Mominator was all for chicken noodle soup, and she found Krista's choice of spicy Indian food a little odd. Both decided that the winner was Maidenhair's suggestion of a good Vietnamese soup. Maidenhair was so busy discussing its benefits that she didn't even notice the strange thing that happened when Angel Knight sat down next to Erik.

"Hey, Pixie," the newcomer said, and she flicked her red and black hair, catching Erik in the face. Instead of fwapping him in the lack of nose, it went right through his head, for all the world as if the Opera Ghost were a real ghost.

"Cool, insubstantially!" Angel Knight flapped her long, dark wings in approval.

"I thought he didn't have a power," Storm said, a slight frown appearing on her regal face.

"EMERGENCY!" Pixie shrieked. "He's losing his character! He's going to fade away to nothing! Get him to the ER!"

Maidenhair snatched the sandwich from Erik's hand. "Oh, no, eating is out of character," she wailed. Fortunately, Erik was substantial enough to carry through the underground network to the medical station. Scott, hearing the commotion, helped clear a path through the cafeteria and ended up carrying Erik for most of the way. What a nice guy.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX mwah hah mini cliffhanger

Maidenhair was racing down the corridor after her friends when a tug on her pants leg nearly sent her sprawling. Looking behind her, she was startled to see the tiny figure of a dwarf. It was one of Mominator's sculptures, the ones that went rogue and were living in the wild somewhere, and it was staring at her left hand.

Maidenhair opened her left hand and found that she was still holding the ham-and-cheese sandwich. There was a fairy tale in which dwarves loved ham. Perhaps an animated clay figurine had inherited that trait. She took the ham out of the sandwich and instantly found herself surrounded by dwarf figurines. Yes, apparently they liked ham.

The dwarves flocked around, offering SHINY gold and silver if she would sell them the ham. Maidenhair fortunately knew which fairy tale the authoress was throwing at her, so she knew what she was supposed to bargain for. "I will give you this ham if you give me the old handmill behind the door," she declared.

At this, the dwarves jumped back, startled. "Come on," Maidenhair cajoled. "It's such a cute little thing! It would fit perfectly on my charm bracelet." The dwarves muttered rebelliously. "All right, if you won't agree to my bargain, I'll just take my nice, juicy ham and EAT IT," Maidenhair announced. The little dwarf figurines became quite frantic, and after a good bit of quarrelling they decided that Maidenhair could have the handmill, which was out of order and quite tricky to use anyway.

The actual handmill, when she got it, was tiny, proportional to the size of the living sculptures. 'Tiny' meant that it was barely bigger than her thumbnail. Only after the dwarves and their ham were safely gone did Maidenhair succumb to the desire to giggle like an idiot while performing a touchdown dance. Then she remembered Erik's predicament and raced back down the hall.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Maidenhair popped through the door, breathless, in time to hear Professor X make a diagnosis. "Erik has been away from his story too long," he gravely announced. "Because the story hasn't even begun, his base character is all he has. Every time he does something out of character he will start to fade from existence and eventually disappear into the world of bad fiction."

A collective shudder went through the room, and liked it so much that it did it again before departing.

"We have to get Erik back to his own time as soon as possible. Scott, could you find Arik for me? I think he can help. Ladies," he said to the remaining crowd, "this man is in a very delicate state. If he is to live, he must remain in character. Anything that you can suggest would be appreciated. I will personally issue a school-wide no-glomping rule."

Krista remembered that she had Erik's lasso and she put it back in his hand. Erik recovered enough to swear at her in French, and, seeing that his rage made him feel a little better, Pixie went off to find Logan.

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**A/N**: Hello, all! Sorry about the lapse in updates. Now that crunch time is over, I'll try to be more reliable. One other thing: The first round of cameos will end in two or three stories, at which point the plot will shift to the world of POTO. If anyone out there still wants a cameo, please apply soon. Fear not, there will be another cameo opportunity later.


	7. Chapter 7: Hello, Kitty

Disclaimer: I don't own rights to POTO, X-men, Harry Potter, Why The Sea Is Salt, Little Shop of Horrors, or the Incredibles. That's a lot of references. Wheee

**A/N**: Well, I've got midterms, so I'm going to throw you this extra-long update in hopes that it will last until I'm free again.

**CHAPTER 7**: In which there is a discussion of fashion

Thanks to Professor X's quick diagnosis, Erik was put in a Phantomly environment and he recovered to his natural state. The professor was working with several mutants about the problem of getting Erik home, but that was the last Erik had heard from him. The X-men kept insisting that Erik's rediscovered depression was a good thing, which made him feel more hurt and betrayed.

You can't win.

He had instinctively taken to haunting the lower tunnels of the facility, avoiding most of the students, who began to doubt his existence.

One day his angst session was interrupted quite forcefully by a girl falling through the ceiling. She almost landed on top of him, but at the last second she windmilled her arms, landing neatly at his feet instead.

"Hi!" she exclaimed cheerfully. "Do I know you? I'm Kitty Pryde. Call me Shadowcat."

By now, Erik was very distrustful of cheerful people.

"I'm looking for my dragon, Lockheed," Kitty continued.

"Norbert," Erik muttered under his breath.

"What?" Shadowcat was obviously confused.

"The dragon that Mominator--" he shuddered. Wretched woman, he thought, if he hadn't eaten anything he wouldn't be here now. "The dragon that she made is called Norbert."

"Oh!" Shadowcat chirped. "I didn't know she had a dragon. I bet Lockheed's with Norbert. Hey, are you going to be all right?"

Erik ground his teeth with frustration and considered Punjabbing her, but he was startled when she came up to him and gently took his arm.

"You should talk to Jubilee. She used to live down here, you know," Kitty said conspiratorially. "She hid down here for ages, watching the students and thinking she'd never fit in. She lived at the Hollywood Mall even before that. Whenever either of us get depressed, we go to the mall and she shows me all her old haunting places."

Erik hesitated. "What is this 'mall' of which you speak?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Lockheed was indeed in room 124. Angel Knight and Mominator were also there, working on a particularly difficult problem in preparation for the dreaded midterm of DOOM, and occasionally looking over to smirk at the dragons' antics.

The little Norbert moved a lot faster than Lockheed, who blinked his eyes as he tried to follow the other dragon's antics. Still, Lockheed seemed to be glad to have a friend that spoke dragon, and he only occasionally got annoyed by how hyper Norbert was. Norbert was in awe of Lockheed because he could breathe fire.

There was a knock at the door, and then Maidenhair came in. "Mominator? If you're not too busy, I could use your help. It's about Erik."

She set her tiny dwarf-made mill on the table. "Professor X says that this mill will help the team that's taking Erik home. Since you're so good with inanimate objects, I was hoping..."

"There's a _team_ now?" Angel Knight interrupted.

Maidenhair smacked her head. "I shouldn't have told you that. He's keeping everything top secret because time travel is very dangerous, so if anyone ever found out that Arik... uh... I mean Erik... um... you get the point," she babbled.

"So, what's your problem?" Mominator asked.

"This mill is supposed to grind out whatever I want it to. That's the way it works in Why The Sea is Salt. The mill grinds out anything for this poor man, but finally a greedy man steals it and asks it to grind salt for his spice traders. He doesn't know how to make it stop, so it just sits at the bottom of the ocean grinding salt."

"Riiiiiight," Angel Knight said.

"So, you're saying you don't know how to get it to stop?" Mominator asked.

"Oh, I can get it to stop easily. It's just getting it to START. Let me show you what I've got so far."

She proceeded to demonstrate. The mill could generate limitless copies of anything that could be pushed into the top, which unfortunately was no bigger than a dime, severely limiting its capacity. After grinding out several Kleenexes cloned from a single piece, Maidenhair said that the mill could also clone by written instruction, but it was very picky.

If she wrote "quarter" on a paper, the mill would grind out pieces of paper with the word "quarter" on them. She had to write the Oxford English Dictionary definition before it could differentiate between the United States currency and the more abstract forms of the word, and even then she had to specify the year of mint that she wanted before it started spitting out quarters like a change machine on steroids.

"So in theory, this mill could produce anything, regardless of size—see how the quarters are much bigger than the outlet of the mill? —but it's so picky that it's almost worthless."

"Basically, it's a glorified toilet paper dispenser," Angel Knight agreed.

"What do you want from me, blood?" Mominator quipped, singing the line from _Little Shop of Horrors_. She got out the vial that she kept on hand for emergencies and poured a drop of blood onto the mill. "Here you go, Audrey!"

_Audrey?_ the mill asked. _I suppose that name will do. What do you want?_

The mill turned out to be stubborn as well as disobedient, so Mominator spent quite some time arguing, cajoling, and threatening by turns. Maidenhair got bored and wandered over to skritch Norbert behind the ears. Finally, Mominator announced a truce.

"Audrey agrees to faithfully reproduce any small drawings into full-sized items, and he'll also ease up on the exact wording of the dictionary definitions, so you can write an approximation instead. In return, he wants to be fed almonds without having to spit them back out again."

Angel Knight gave Audrey a look. _What? I like almonds,_ Audrey "said," defensively.

"Thanks, Mominator!" Maidenhair said. "I'll just take Audrey and Lockheed and let you get back to work."

"Why do you want Lockheed?" Mominator asked.

"Kitty's going shopping with Jubilee," came the reply. "I met her in the hall and she asked me to feed Lockheed while she was gone. She said she'd made a new friend who had never seen a real mall before and... uh-oh." She raced out the door.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

She was too late.

Erik was already at the mall, following Shadowcat and the Chinese girl who was called Jubilee. The "mall" turned out to be a very large marketplace built indoors and slathered with garish colors. Erik felt very out of place in his formal wear, especially since girls kept staring at him.

"The staring is a good thing," Kitty said. "They think you look hot."

"Actually, it's freezing in here," Erik replied.

"She means they're flirting with you," Jubilee explained.

Erik was very confused by this, since he had never thought of himself as anything other than hideous. Perhaps it was the new mask that did it. After explaining that a man in all black and a ski mask looked like a thief or a terrorist, and that thievery, far from being an admirable and skilled profession, could get you shot by high-accuracy revolvers, the girls had bought him a white leather mask.

**(A/N**: Don't go telling me it's porcelain. Porcelain doesn't breathe well, it's too heavy to be supported by a strap, and it breaks. It's made of really fine-workmanship leather, like most good masks.)

The girls steered Erik past the flirters and then proceeded to explain modern fashion. Erik was actually scared. Women wore practically nothing! The clothing of the kids at the mansion had seemed scandalous before, but now he began to appreciate the fact that they were conservatively dressed. Here, there were whole stores selling "miniskirts" and revealing tops and lingerie, right out there in the open. He brightened when he heard that there were corsets at Victoria's Secret, but one glimpse of a thong had him covering his eyes and walking by the store veryfast.

There were very nice stores for men, but there were also stores selling trousers that were designed to fall down. Jubilee explained that boys who wore those pants were usually "posers" or fake "gangstas," which was a little like being a fop. Even in his teenaged state, Erik detested fops, so the trio soon began a game of "Hunt the Fop."

The rules were this: Anyone who saw a fop would steal his belt, thus causing his pants to fall down. Erik wanted to strangle them, "just a little bit, not enough to hurt them," but Kitty convinced him that this way it was a game of skill, because you had to take the belt without the fop knowing that it was you.

They had a merry time ambushing the fops and watching them scurry into the leather store for new belts, clutching their pants and glancing around furtively to see if anyone else had noticed.

Finally Kitty was finally caught in the act. The fop grabbed her arm and bleated like a sheep for a security guard. Kitty pulled her arm through his hand and ran into a store, where she checked for spectators and security cameras before walking through the wall. "Come on!" Jubilee whispered urgently, pulling Erik through a door that said Employees Only. They raced by shelves of shoeboxes and past a loading dock and met Kitty in a small back room.

"That was great!" Jubilee grinned. "I haven't had a good haunting in at least a month!" She told Erik how she used to put on small fireworks shows for money in various parts of the store, and how her knowledge of the back passages of the mall had let her escape the security guards every time. Erik found this very inspiring and started wondering how fun it would be to have a haunt of his own.

They counted their spoils of war (Kitty had three belts; Jubilee, five; Erik, ten and a belt chain, or, as he called it, a watch chain without a watch) and decided to head back to the mansion for dinner.

Erik knew better than to go to dinner with the girls, so he went back to his temporary home beneath the mansion. He patted himself down and convinced himself that he was still quite solid. This meant that haunting and fop-hunting were all part of his character, and he could do **that** whenever he wanted, instead of being depressed all the time. His mouth twitched into the softest of smiles.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**A/N:** Okay! I hoped you like this chapter, because there will be more like it. I have this feeling that I'm getting too serious for a "humor" section, but I'm trying my hardest. Hopefully it at least left you feeling all fuzzly inside. **NO** MORE CAMEOS for just now, s'il vous plait. There's still at least one more chapter to wrap the current cameos up, but I can't add new ones in, because I'm already introducing another character—Jazzy, my alter-ego, who is vital to the story. There will be another chance for cameos later on, never fear!


	8. Chapter 8: SHINY

Disclaimer: I do not on POTO, X-men, Finding Nemo, or Princess Bride. Jazzy is my alter-ego and she wants you to know that she's not always this ADD.

**CHAPTER 8**: In which there is progress.

A few days later, Erik went to wash his clothes and realized that he only had one outfit.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Arik's power, it turns out, could not only allow him to teleport, but he could also chronoport, jumping back and forth in time.

(**A/N**: Sorry, dude. I know you wanted shape-shifting, but for the longest time I thought of shifting as teleportation, and it got written into the plot. It's kind of vital. Plus, it's cool.)

Arik and the Professor had been conducting top-secret experiments for several days now. After strong coaching from the Professor as to how to deal with seeing himself in the same room, Arik jumped back in time by five seconds. The result was that Arik saw Arik while he was still practicing meditation, and then he had to go and do the time jump and see himself still practicing meditation before doing the jump and seeing himself still practicing meditation before...

Needless to say, Arik panicked a little bit at the impossibility of it all. The Professor kept his cool and mentally coached Arik into jumping back to the time right after he left, and reality resumed.

Arik and Professor X had a long philosophical discussion about how all this was possible as long as Arik didn't change anything, and about the dangers of messing with time, and about alternate universes. Then they decided just to not think about that kind of thing.

The idea was that Arik would teleport Erik back to his own time and place. Behind locked doors, Arik learned to jump backwards by an hour to a different room from that in which he started, using proper visualizing techniques.

At about this point, the Professor realized that Arik would not be able to visualize the interior of Erik's underground lair. There were too many different opinions—the book, the other book, the musicals, the movies. They couldn't just ask Erik what the lair looked like, because he hadn't been there yet.

Professor X wheeled his way down to Cerebro and started searching for light-bending mutants. He needed someone even more powerful than Daystar; someone who could make a picture in the air for Arik to jump into. He couldn't find anyone with that kind of talent. There was a boy who could throw lasers, but... and a older woman who could absorb light for energy, only... He was just about to give up when it occured to him to scan for potential, instead of existing, powers.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Scott was talking to Storm in the TV room when the Professor wheeled in.

"Storm, can you come with me right now? I'd like to fly to Massachusetts and pick up a very important mutant-to-be. Scott, you can watch the house."

"No, I'll come with you," Scott said, remembering the last time he had to baby-sit. Chaos and flying vegetables. Apparently he was the only one who thought asparagus tasted good for dinner. "Logan can guard the mansion, since he seems to be so good at it. Tell him no dead bodies this time."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Today was double Physics. Oh joy. Jazzy slumped into her seat, reprimanded herself for poor posture, tried sitting up straight, thought better of it, and fell asleep on top of her books instead. She was just starting to believe that she her head was actually resting on a fluffy pillow when the bell rang. She shot into an upright position for the start of class, wincing as her neck went on strike and demanded the return of fluffy pillowness.

"All right, let's go on to the next chapter," the professor (not THE professor, just a normal bloke) mumbled, buying himself time while he pulled up a page on the new SmartBoard. "This chapter... deals with light."

_Hehe. Shineeeey._ Jazzy definitely needed some sleep. Or sugar. Except sugar made her worse. Her best friend, Corinne, was convinced that they had been magpies in a past life. "Shiny" had become their unofficial battle cry after so many shopping trips spent swooping down upon pointless but pretty trinkets.

The professor droned on and on about light. "We will be considering light in the form of a wave," (drawing a sine curve on the board) "with crests and troughs." (labeling "crest" and "trough.")

"Can light be considered as something besides a wave?" one of the boys asked, as if it weren't weird enough that light vaguely resembled water.

"Well..." said the professor, considering how badly this might befuddle the class. "Light can also be considered as a particle. In fact, it behaves like a wave or like a particle depending on your type of problem. It's known as a waveicle. Don't worry, we'll only be dealing with waves."

Jazzy drew a little smiley face in the middle of her sine curve and labeled it "waveicle." She frowned and drew another arrow to name the waveicle "Bob."

The professor pulled out a prism and waved it around as he talked about RGB or something that Jazzy would have been very interested in if it were not for two vital facts.

1. She was sleep-deprived.

2. The prism was SHINY!

_Shiny shiny shiny,_ Jazzy sang happily in her mind, _especially that pretty purple-blue ray of light coming off of the left side. I shall call you shiny and you shall be my shiny. Come here, shiny!_

Surprisingly, the purple light detached itself from the prism and came bounding over to Jazzy's desk, where it formed a small ball and bounced happily between her hands.

"Aaaaaah! It's a WIIIITCH!" screamed one of the other girls, the one who had been watching too much late-night television.

"I'm not a witch, I'm your wife! And after what you just said, I'm not even sure I want to be THAT any more!" Jazzy retorted. The class blinked at her. "Come on, guys. Princess Bride? Really good movie? Really good book as long as you don't read the depressing epilogue thingie?"

Jazzy suddenly noticed that the reason everyone seemed rather frozen was that they WERE frozen. Something behind her squeaked and she whipped around, clutching her precious shiny tightly. Two figures in black leather and a man in a wheelchair were framed by the doorway. She stared. They stared. The shiny bounced.

"You have GOT to be kidding me," Scott grimaced.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**A/N**: Well, there you have it! Chapter 8! I return triumphant!

I hope my loyal fanbase is still out there :-D My apologies for taking so long, and for changing Arik's power, and for forgetting that Incredibles reference last chapter. It'll be in the next chapter, never fear. Tally ho!


	9. Chapter 9: Movies and Mode

Disclaimer: I don't own POTO, X-Men, The BFG, Harry Potter, or the Incredibles, and I don't have a muse, just a sibling who pokes me until I write another chapter.

**CHAPTER 9:** In which Erik's clothing problem is solved.

Professor X lost no time in getting Jazzy transferred to Mutant High. The only one sorry to see her go was Corrine, who soon realized that this was all to her advantage. Now she could fulfill her lifelong dream of glomping Kurt whenever she visited her friend. Unfortunately, Kurt has been missing since Chapter 4, so Corinne will have to wait.

Jazzy herself loved the new school. The classes were on a higher level, the teachers were interesting, she was going to learn how to make more shiny things, and she made a new friend. Almost instantly, in fact.

"Shandou!" Pixie bubbled the instant they all trouped off the plane.

Jazzy, not quite sure of what language to reply in, did a small bow. "Uh, hi?" she tried.

"I heard all about you!" Pixie squealed. "I can hear up to twenty miles away, don'tcha know. You're our new student from Massachusetts and you like Calculus and ice cream and—OOH, SHINY!"

"Do you like it?" Jazzy asked shyly, bringing out her bouncing ball of purple for Pixie to see. "I just made it. I'm not sure what to call it. My name's Jazzy, by the way."

"Do you think I could have one?" Pixie breathed, entranced by the SHINYness. "What? Oh! I'm Pixie," she added, nodding politely. "I'm sorry, I'm easily distracted."

"Well!" Professor X beamed. "It looks like we have the material for Jazzy's first lesson! Jazzy, I'd like you to try and make a 'shiny' on purpose. Scott and I will help you out, won't we, Scott? I thought so. Storm, you can go tell Logan we're home."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Twenty minutes later, the two girls were trying to come up with names for Pixie's new shiny while Pixie gave Jazzy the grand tour.

"Here's one of the nicer bathrooms," Pixie narrated, waving her hand at a door. "It looks like something out of The BFG, you know, the book by Roald Dahl."

"What, the bathroom?"

"No! The shiny! It looks like one of the good dreams that the Big Friendly Giant caught, not the Golden Fizzwizard thingies or the Tronglehopper—Trugglehomper—Trogglehumper! There we go, gad, it's been ages since I read the book—I mean the normal dreams, you know?"

Jazzy read that last sentence again and realized that Pixie was comparing the new shiny to the blue-green, oval blobs that were the most prevalent dreams in the BFG's cave.

"OH! Yeah, you're right!" Jazzy exclaimed. "Are you going to call it 'Dream?'"

"No, I know! I'll her Glisten. That, by the way, was the door to the pool."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Meanwhile, in the game room, Maidenhair and Krista were holding a frantic discussion in whispered voices.

"They're holding a Phantom marathon? They can't do that with Erik around! What if he saw? It could change the entire story!"

"I know! That's why Professor X asked us to find a way to keep Erik out of the way."

"HOW are we supposed to restrain a PHANTOM?"

At that moment, Erik walked into the room. Both girls looked up guiltily, but Erik was too preoccupied to notice. "Excuse me, Krista," he said in a slightly unnatural voice, all his silkiness buried under embarrassed hesitation. "I hate to bother, but you see... I need clothes."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jazzy's instructions had been very clear. She was to watch all of the Phantom movies ever made, except Phantom of the Paradise, which didn't really count. She was to think over the performance of the musical that she had seen last year. She was to contemplate the Kay version and deeply peruse the original novel and then, in short, design Erik's lair. Since Arik would use her image to transport Erik back in time, Jazzy's design would become the real thing. Jazzy's reaction to this great responsibility would make us all proud.

At 10:00 the following announcement was made over the P.A. system:

"Professor X and Erik have left the building! Storm is in charge. Now, we know she said that you have to stay in class, but after listening to the full original-cast soundtrack, she has changed her mind. All those interested in the Phantom marathon will be let into the TV room in half an hour. Please form five orderly lines, as attendance will be taken at the door. All of the non-phans are expected to report to Logan in the gym. Pajamas, pillows, and sleeping bags ARE allowed, but PLEASE don't bring any nail polish and remember to throw away all candy wrappers! Thank you!"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Is that... cheering?" Scott asked as they motored away from the school. "I thought I heard a noise coming from over by the school."

Krista and Maidenhair glanced at each other over Erik's head and tried to suppress giggles. Professor X gave them a scrutinizing look from his position in shotgun and then raised an eyebrow. The girls were relieved to see that he wasn't mad about the party.

"Why can't we just fly in?" Erik wanted to know. He tried not to sound whiny, but he did so very much want to go flying again.

"There's a force field around the entire complex," Scott replied. "That kind of technology is so cutting-edge that only a handful of people even know it exists." Scott was a technology nut. Boys and their toys. "I mean, the amount of energy to power this thing is huge! If she hadn't invested in the eco-friendly generator..."

"Scott, please watch the road," Professor X not-so-gently reminded him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After running through several phases of security, the four mutants and the Erik were greeted by the designer herself. She was wearing a business-like but stunning red and black outfit with swooping sleeves. She had short black hair and a large nose, upon which were perched glasses that would put Harry Potter to shame. She was very, very short, especially compared to Erik. She was Edna Mode.

"So nice to see you again, Xavier! What challenge have you brought me this time? I trust that the new leather suits are to your liking? Of course they are, oh, dahling, you flatter too much." She paused at an eye scanner, tapped a fingerprint reader and then announced, "Edna Mode" very clearly into a microphone. "Five guest mutants." A gun popped out of nowhere and leveled itself at Erik, who instinctively rolled out of the way and produced a throwing dagger. Professor X whispered to Edna. "Correction!" she said loudly into the mike. "Four mutants and one human." The gun looked at Erik and then neatly popped out of sight.

Edna led the slightly shaky group into a large atrium, where she sat down on the edge of an oversized chair and eagerly pulled out several sketchpads and pencils. "So? What have you brought for me?"

Professor X seemed to know the routine. "I'd like one outfit for a female light-bender," he began.

"Of course!" Edna cried, sketching frantically. "It must be streamlined. None of this bulky leather padding, no. Stealth! is by far the most important element!" She had a tendency to phrase everything like an inspirational speech. "Very modest, hood to prevent interference from the hair, flexible and breathable fabric." She produced a sketch.

"Wonderful, Edna, simply wonderful," Professor X said politely. He seemed to really mean it, too. He was not at all put off by her odd style of business. "Krista, you will need a special suit for training in. What do you want it to be like?"

Startled, Krista replied, "Well, I'm a water-breather, so just a nice suit like what they wear at the Olympics would be great. I have gills somewhere inside my neck, so it can't be too tight there, and I have a blowhole, but other than that..."

"Hah!" Edna interrupted. "I will put all of their little Olympic Speedos to shame! Sharkskin. Water flow. Amateurs! You, dahling, must wear this!" Krista was impressed by the rough sketch, even more so when she realized that Edna could actually invent the kind of specialized fabric the suit would require. Edna, however, snatched the sketch back for some revision. "Easy to take on and off, none of these zippers! Reinforcement around the knees to prevent muscle damage during the breaststroke! I'll need your measurements, of course, to place this blowhole, but first I must know if anything else is requested of me? Surely this cannot be it, Xavier."

"No, Edna. Erik, here," (Erik jerked slightly) "needs six complete outfits of formal men's wear circa the 1870's, two outfits of traditional Persian garb from the same date, and two capes."

"No capes!" Edna declared, viciously scratching out whatever she had been drawing. "Far too dangerous. You should know better, Xavier!"

"Please, Edna, he must have a cape," Krista said boldly. She made a head-jerking motion at Maidenhair, who pulled Erik aside, saying, "Erik, you also get to request a masquerade costume of your own design, so think of something..." Once they were out of earshot, Krista leaned forward and whispered, "He does not know it yet, and he cannot know, but he is the Phantom of the Opera!"

"Aha!" Edna cried. "A true challenge! Of course he must have a cape. It has been too long since I saw the musical. A friend of mine designed the costumes, you know. Brilliant, considering the time and lack of materials... (scribble scribble) she had to import all those beads herself, poor thing... (scribble) Here! Long black cloak with hood, waterproof, safety release on the clasp. For outdoors. And here! Long cape, jet black, medium weight, woven for resistance to blades, safety release on the clasp, which is adjustable for close quarters, especially if he is to be clambering about in the flies."

Maidenhair brought Erik back over. "I would like one more outfit," he said, his eyes lit with inspiration. "It must be red..."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

And we end it here. Suffice it to say, Erik has (without Maidenhair's help) dreamed up his Red Death outfit. Edna will also provide him with a pair of sexy Don Juan pants and two fedoras. Next chapter will be a blipic, in honor of Misty Breyer, but after that we will be able to see the results of Edna's hard work! I hope you all like it. I seriously need to go to bed now.


	10. Chapter 10: A Blipic

Disclaimer: I do not own rights to Nightcrawler. If I did, I would be rich right now. I also don't own rights to POTO, RENT, iTunes, Harry Potter, or the X-men, and "blipic" is a term coined by Misty Breyer.

**CHAPTER 10**: A blipic, in which LXR finally gets a cameo.

eepybird sat at her computer, staring thoughtfully at the screen. Now that the play was over, she had a pile of backed-up homework to finish, especially that annoying five-page analytical/research paper that was due in negative one day. She considered putting yet more research into her fic. She found out that the X-mansion was actually in New York, instead of Massachusetts. She would have to change that chapter. Then she got totally distracted by how… unusual some of the old X-men costumes look on the official Marvel site. She was soon well on her way to procrastinating through the next week.

Fortunately, at that moment eepybird's conscience showed up in the form of EvilTwin2, who is the official Kick-In-The-Rear-To-Get-You-Moving-Because-You-Have-No-Muse-To-Do-It-For-Me Girl.

"Write, pig!" (A/N: This is a quote from a sample college essay in one of those how-to-get-accepted books. It's a good essay. I don't own rights to it.)

"But… but…" eepybird downsized whatever love-note to her geeky boyfriend of awesomeness she was writing, revealing the Marvel webpage beneath. EvilTwin2 leaned in for a closer look.

"OMG what HAPPENED to that girl's COSTUME?"

"That's a guy."

Here I may mention that EvilTwin2 is a psychotic costume designer supreme who made many insanely detailed and pretty things to surround me during my minor lead in the play. Thus the temporary bronchial failure.

EvilTwin2 gasped with temporary bronchial failure at the horror of it all, then realized that eepybird was trying to get her sidetracked.

"Write, pig!"

"Will you bribe me?"

"Fine. Here. Sugar."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Since this is fanfiction, the computer room had a nicer couch with squishy pillows on it. It was also part of a sizeable but not obscene house near a rocky granite beach, and various entities known to eepybird only through fanfiction could visit if they wanted to.

Usually they rang the doorbell or something, and eepybird would jump up and down trying to see who it was through the window wayatthetop of the door because she was too dumb to write a peephole in and too paranoid to just OPEN the DOOR.

LXR didn't ring the doorbell, so she missed out on this amusing ritual. LXR is a vampire, and in her world, this means she can shape-shift, so she turned into an ant and scuttled her way straight to the computer room. Doors are for wusses anyway.

"Hi, guys!" she announced, turning back into her normal human form with an unnecessary but cool flick of long, flowing sleeves. "Did you know that your house is full of ants?"

"Yeah. It's called spring. It happens about five times every year because winter is stupid and it keeps forgetting to go away," EvilTwin2 said. "Don't worry about the ants. The slinkys scare them away."

A passing pod of slinkys rippled appreciatively.

"Hey, eepybird?" LXR snagged a pillow from the couch before continuing. "What's with you and cameos?"

"I like writing them! It's fun to figure out ways to include everyone. I worry that I'm not devoting any time at all to the actual plot, so I try to work cameos in to be vital to the plot… even though they take up a lot of time… er… okay, so they're mostly unnecessary, but I like them, and I think everyone else does, too—I swear I'll write plot! And the cameos are going away n a chapter or two so things will go faster! It all makes sense in the end, it does! Everything in the Phantom's lair is going to be integrated with the X-men! It's good, I swear!"

"Uh, eepybird? No one's criticizing your fic. I was wondering when _I_ would get a cameo." It was a rather nice pillow, really. One of those therapeutic sand-filled squishy ones.

"Didn't I give you one? I swear I did… wow, the play really messed up my schedule… gee, I'm sorry, I…"

"Write, pig!"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Eepybird had just pulled "What You Own" up on iTunes and had yet to open her fic when Kurt appeared in the middle of the floor, looking dazed. Blue eyelids blinked a few times, and yellow eyes widened in alarm as a strange room with three fangirls swam (freestyle) into view.

"Oh, so THAT'S where he got to after that storm in Chapter 4," eepybird said happily.

"SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

A fourth fangirl Apparated on the spot. Corinne wasn't that rabid of a Harry Potter fan, but she had learned a few vital spells somewhere along the line. She lost no time in glomping the unfortunate elf, who, having no idea where he was, and not wishing to teleport into a wall, could not really escape.

He did try flailing a bit.

The girls hugged him a few times each. Who could resist? He was fuzzy and BLUE and his coat smelled like leather and a hint of brimstone. Brimstone smells like rotten eggs, actually, but no one really minded except for eepybird and EvilTwin2, who were the only ones to know how bad rotten eggs really smell.

Finally everyone settled down, except for Kurt, who was still praying for deliverance. They sat cross-legged in a cirle on the floor. Corrine went to get a bowl of popcorn.

"Where am I?" Kurt asked, finally, in an adorable accent that I still dare not attempt, but which was making the girls twitch slightly.

"You are in the house of the Authoress," eepybird said cheerfully. "That being myself. Call me eepybird."

"I'm EvilTwin2," EvilTwin2 said.

"I'm Lord of the (r)ings and X-men Rock," LXR said. "Call me L-X-R or LXR."

"I'm Corinne," Corrine said, coming back with the popcorn and accidentally stepping on Kurt's tail as she put it down in the middle of the circle.

It hurt. A lot. Kurt had surprisingly never had his tail stepped on before. It felt like getting a finger caught in a door, only a little more muted and over a much longer area. A few tailbones made popping noises.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Corinne said, rubbing the injured tail-tip a few times to get circulation up and running again.

THAT felt weird. It was not unlike having someone rub his feet. He had ticklish feet. His tail lashed a few times. EvilTwin2 took notes so she would know how to make a realistic tail for Corinne's next costume.

"So, Kurt," eepybird continued through a mouth full of popcorn, "I'm sure this has been somewhat traumatizing, but it did prove one of my suspicions."

"What is that?" Kurt asked, looking slightly worried.

"You can teleport through different dimensions, Kurt. How else did you get here?"

"This is a different dimension?" Kurt was very confused. He probably thought he had died and gone to Fangirl heaven and fuzzyboy hell.

"This is the dimension of authors and authoresses. We control your lives to some extent, and we ourselves are under some kind of higher control. Don't worry too much about it," eepybird said.

She got to her feet and walked over to the computer, where she typed a few sentences. As she typed, an image appeared on the left wall. It looked just like the X-Mansion. "Here you go, Kurt," eepybird said. "Concentrate very hard on teleporting to this place, and you'll end up back home. You will find that some time has passed since you left. _This is not so very unlike what Arik is doing_."

This was obviously supposed to be some kind of meaningful hint. It went over Kurt's head and disappeared into the image on the wall, causing it to ripple slightly. Maybe the hint would hit him when he got back home.

Kurt turned and looked at the wall. It did look very much like home. He noticed that the picture included a clock. The clock was ticking. Perhaps this was to help him go back to the right time as well as the right space. He called upon various saints to protect him, took a deep breath, and vanished.

The image on the wall shuddered, and suddenly Kurt was there. Someone came down the stairs in the picture and hugged him. Poor Kurt. He never could escape.

With a few more keystrokes at the computer, the image on the wall vanished, and life went back to almost-normal for the Authoress and her friends.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Many miles and a few dimensions away, Kurt appeared next to the stairs. Had he done it? Was he home?

Maidenhair came running down the stairs. "THERE you are, Kurt! I've been looking all over for you!" she said as she hugged him.

Yep. He was back, all right.


	11. Chapter 11: Window to a world

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the X-men or their sequels and whatnot put out by Marvel, and I own neither Spiderman, the movie, nor any version of POTO, nor Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, nor the brand name Slinky.

**CHAPTER 11:** In which several things are forgotten.

In eepybird's comfy home: The Internet came back after much cajoling and a few visits from the cable guy. eepybird, empowered once more, decided to see how the X-men were doing. But first, she taught her brand-new slinky how to walk down stairs.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The beauty of being able to bend light is that one can paint with light itself instead of mucking about with brushes and pigments. Jazzy quickly got the hang of forcing a white surface to absorb a certain frequency of light. The energy dissipated into the surface and caused it to heat up a bit, which got to be a problem. Logan was less than happy when she accidentally burned a hole into his room.

The Professor asked Jazzy to hit the Physics books, but that made her mind hurt until she actually took the advice, at which point her hand hurt quite a bit as well, though it made her feel better. Meanwhile, Xavier called Alison Blaire, the Dazzler, and managed to ask her a few questions about how she turned sound into light. He also asked her about a light-bending villain she was reputed to have fought, but this turned out to be a crossover story created by her agents during the post-Spiderman-movie boom in mutant popularity. Xavier then had Jubilee perform various experiments involving the reabsorbing of her fireworks. He even had Gambit write down a few details about transforming potential energy into kinetic energy.

In the end, he constructed a theory based on very fuzzy logic and defying most principles of physics and had Jazzy test it a few times. After some tinkering with the concept, Jazzy learned how to harmlessly change an object's color semi-permanently. The energy given off by artificially absorbed colors was used to "power" colors unnaturally forced to reflect from the surface.

In English: She could make things change colors for as long as she wanted.

Jazzy tested out her newfound ability by going around the school and adjusting fashion. She made a dyeless, tieless tie-dye T-shirt for Pixie. She turned her hair dark green. She turned Scott's pants pink, but this was a bad idea and she quickly fixed them. She sat Kurt down in front of a mirror and ran through several skin tones with him until he was forced to admit that blue looks good on him. She wrote equations on the blackboard from the back of the room during Calculus. She left chaos and pretty colors in her wake until Professor X finally caught her and made her get to work on the image that would help Erik return to his novel.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Erik was finally out of the mansion again, gone with Professor X to go pick up his outfits from Edna. It was about time. He had spent the last week wondering loudly to anyone who would listen, or at least inadvertently hear, if his "Red Death" costume would turn out right. The girls were willing to forgive him this annoying plug for attention only because Edna was also making a pair of Don Juan pants as well.

With Erik out of the way, Jazzy set about on a great scavenger hunt, tracking down all of the librettos and books and DVDs that she had foolishly lent out after the great Phantom marathon the week before. (Yes, it had only been a week. Edna works quickly.) She spent several hours on this task because certain people had hidden their DVDs from her, hoping to keep them. She spent the next few hours triple-checking the reference image she had created, the one that would help Arik take Erik back through time, space, and reality to his home in the Leroux novel.

After a few small changes, Jazzy sat back on her heels to survey her final creation. Unfortunately, she had terrible balance and this caused her to go tumbling sideways. She half-expected to fall into the scene she had created on the wall. The wall, of course, had other ideas.

Had she continued her fall, she would have tripped into quite an ordinary room. Her design of the Phantom's lair covered the entire back wall of the classroom in which she was working, and it seemed to be more of an extension of the room than anything else. The room she had chosen was the drawing room, and, unlike those in the movie and musical sets, the room was completely finished, with four walls and everything.

She went over her checklist for the fourth time. Baskets and vases full of flowers tied with silk ribbons- check. Lots of them. Hopefully Erik didn't have allergies. Small chair: check. Hangings: Check. She had put up two hangings, as well as a few portieres around the doorways. Small, waxed mahogany chair with antimacassar: Check, although she had to look up the word "antimacassar." Chimney of the fireplace in the Louis-Phillipe room: Check. Piano: She had given him a small upright piano to save space, figuring that the organ in his bedroom was more than plenty already.

Surprisingly, this was all she could find specifically mentioned in the Leroux novel. She made sure to include doors to the Louis-Philippe bedroom and the Phantom's bedroom, but after that, it was up to her judgment. She added two sofas and one more chair, figuring that Erik would maintain the appearance of his drawing room as if he often entertained company, even though he notably did not. She decided to connect the drawing room to the dining room, and so the small table and two chairs were just visible in the left corner of the picture. She put in a doorway leading to a hall just out of sight, figuring that there had to be other rooms in the house. She had carefully calculated the position of the hall, hoping to anticipate where a madman architect would put it, and she had left the end of the hall out of sight because she had no idea whether the next room was a kitchen or a second bathroom or even a library or dressing room.

The whole thing looked freakishly like her grandmother's house.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

In the basement of the school, there was a sound like a car door slamming. Angel Knight pricked up her ears. Krista looked up from her knitting. "Erik's back!" they shouted at the same time, racing upstairs to get their cameras before heading towards the unlucky Phantom with plans to make him model his new clothes.

They were met in the hallway by scores of girls and two of the gay guys. The rapidly swelling pack raced down the corridor, buffeting Angel out of the way. The poor man was busy on his cellphone, arguing with his agent about his portrayal in the upcoming X-men 3 movie.

Imagine, if you will, what his agent must have heard:

"Look, they've blown all the combat way out of proportion, and I don't want to JAYZUS MARY AND JOSEPH!"

followed by the sound of a herd of gleeful wildebeasts

followed by a dial tone as Angel's phone disconnected.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Squeals of delight rang in the Professor's ears as he quickly wheeled away, abandoning Erik to his fate.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Upstairs in the classroom, Jazzy heard the tell-tale signs of Erik's return and began hastily stowing the Phantom literature in her backpack. Professor X came in a few minutes later.

"Jazzy, this is perfect!" he exclaimed as he carefully examined the image. "You even included a clock for reference—and it's ticking? How did you manage that?"

"It wasn't that hard, really," Jazzy said with an embarrassed shrug. "It just needed an equation from that Physics book. Speaking of physics, I have a question," she added as a thought popped into her mind at the prodding of the Authoress.

"Ask away," Xavier said.

"Well, if Erik was brought forward in time before his story was even written, and he has not yet been returned to his own time, how did we get all the stories and musicals and stuff that won't fit in my backpack? How do we even know he exists if he never became the Opera Ghost?"

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has the following to say about impossible events:

Impossible events are things that, according to all laws of physics, time, and space, simply should not occur. Unfortunately, they happen all the time. The trick to managing these events is to deny their existence. The laws of physics are far too busy to apply all the time, especially with the advancements in chronotechnology that have will been/are created/ing/ayd. Therefore, if you completely forget that a law should apply, it will not; however, the instant that you even subconsciously believe in a law, it will come into effect, probably whacking you with greater force than necessary, just to make up for lost time. See also: Bistromatics; Impossible sports, flying; Irony.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Erik! We've all been waiting for you! We know you look great in those outfits and we just HAVE to see."

"How do you know that I look... great... if you haven't seen them yet?" Erik asked to buy time while he inched for the door.

"We... just know. Ummm. Hey, girls, does anyone know why we know he's going to look good?"

"Umm... because he looks good now?" one girl offered timidly, although she had a feeling that the whole mask thing did not work well on Erik and it was really childish of him to wear his super suit all day for no reason.

Up in the room where Jazzy stood, all of her Phantom goodies suddenly vanished. This terrible, horrible loss went completely unremarked.

"I'm sorry, what were you just saying?" Professor Xavier enquired politely.

"I'm not sure..." Jazzy replied. "I guess I was just asking how you like my painting."

"It's a very nice room. You've rendered the details so well that we can have Arik practice jumping there, if it's a real place. Is it a real place?"

"It's my grandmother's house. The perspective is kind of off, though."

"Great! Arik will love the chance to get some more practice in before—what was it again? Oh right, final exams."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Mwah hah ah ah, the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers. All will end well, assuming I get at least four hours of sleep tonight and manage to finish my assignments before class.


	12. Chapter 12: This is madness

Disclaimer: I do not own rights to Roadrunner, the Matrix, The Incredibles, The Princess Bride, L.L. Bean, Spandex, The Scarlet Letter, Pirates of the Caribbean (1), X-Men, or POTO. Whew.

**CHAPTER 12:** In which there is fashion.

For those who found the last chapter confusing, a brief recap: Laws of physics only apply when you believe in them. If you don't know that something is supposed to happen, it won't actually happen until you start to suspect that something should be wrong (at which point something WILL be wrong.) For example: Wile E. Coyote is so intent on chasing Roadrunner that he runs right off a cliff without noticing. After a few seconds of running on air he looks down, his eyes bug out of his head, and he suddenly drops like a stone.

There is no spoon.

Since Erik was taken out of his novel before the Opera House was even built, he never got the chance to do anything extraordinary. As a result, there is no book; Erik is at most a shadow of an idea in the back of Leroux's mind. Since the book was never written, the squealing phangirls at the mansion should not have read the book or watched the movie; however, the books, operas, and movies existed and the girls were rabid fans of Erik for quite some time because they did not KNOW that it was impossible. Until Jazzy opened her mouth.

Because Jazzy pointed out the problem, no one knows who Erik is anymore, beyond these facts: he doesn't eat a lot, he's frequently depressed, he wears a mask, and he looks good in a cape. Only Krista and Alanna know he can speak French, and Alanna's several hundred thousand miles away. Only the characters in Chapter 3 know that Erik is a ventriloquist. All the characters presented so far except Angel and Angel Knight (heehee, I didn't even plan that) know that Erik is not from around here, but they have no idea where they're supposed to be taking him, and they're the only ones in the school who know anything about it. Kitty Pryde and Jubilee know that Erik is a foreigner, and Lockheed suspects that he's not from this world. Norbert is oblivious. Only the people present at Erik's de-masking in Chapter 5 know about his deformity. No one knows he can sing.

That's right. No one. I'm evil.

Everything in the past few chapters still happened, and everyone remembers most of what they said and did, but suddenly they cannot remember exactly WHY. Let's see how things play out from here.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The ex-phangirls may not remember why they found Erik so horribly attractive, but they still love shopping and have a penchant for Edna's clothing, so they wanted to see all the outfits that Erik had received. Erik was surrounded and escorted to the locker room next to the training pool. Here the girls clustered anxiously outside while the two guys convinced Erik to put on a fashion show.

"All you've got to do is walk out of the locker room, take ten strides forwards, and then turn around and go back," the waterbending mutant said.

"And in the format of a fashion show, they'll be too busy taking pictures to jump on you," his partner added.

"You're going to have to try everything on anyway, to see if it fits."

"Now, are you going to get changed or do we have to help you?" the guy with the monkey tail asked.

Gathering up what was left of his dignity, Erik stalked to the handicapped stall, hangers in hand, and made a point of locking it behind him whilst muttering several choice swears in Persian.

"That wasn't nice," the waterbender whispered.

"All I'm really interested in is the clothes, but he doesn't have to know that," Monkey Boy replied with a wink.

Just then Erik emerged, dressed in his first outfit.

"Oooh, I like it!"

"Go on, you look fabulous!"

Erik was shoved out the door, where he was instantly confronted by at least twenty cameras.

He was wearing his stealth outfit, which he was already naming his "haunting" outfit, since Jubilee had inspired him to get a haunt of his own as soon as possible. This meant he was wearing the cape without the hood. It was long and black and had a satin weave that glinted dully against the camera flashes. He was wearing a black Jacobite shirt, loosely laced for freedom of movement. His black pants had a special belt loop for his lasso, which was mercifully missing. He also sported the first fedora, some really sweet kid leather gloves with reinforcement on the fingers, a black mask that covered more of his jaw than the white facemask did, and a pair of black leather boots that would have made the Dread Pirate Roberts jealous. Everything was deepest black, except his socks, which were white, but the boots covered them anyway.

The cameras flashed.

The girls squeed.

And the boombox that one of the girls had thoughtfully brought along blared, "I'MMMM TOO SEXY FOR MY LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE" as it launched into song.

Erik rocked back on his heels, caught between downright terror and triumph as he realized for the first time that girls really were attracted to him. His mood suddenly flashed into anger at himself for being afraid, and an even deeper rage at how much he wanted the approval of this herd of adoring but surely brainless girls. He ground his teeth. His eyes would have flashed had they been capable. He stalked forward ten paces, fingering an imaginary lasso, twirled his cape in their faces, and stalked back.

An angry Erik is an Erik in his prime. It doesn't get any better than this.

Except that it did get better. His next outfit was intended to be relaxed wear, but it included his dressier Don Juan pants (which, incidentally, will never feature in Don Juan.) The pants were black with just a bit of Spanish-flavored embroidery down the sides, and they were a tighter fit with softer fabric. He was wearing a different pair of boots, a little longer in the leg and without the extra ankle reinforcement that Edna had thoughfully added to the haunting boots, so these boots were more suited for formal wear. He was wearing a dark reddish-brown vest that would be called "brick" or "rustic red" in an L.L. Bean Catalog and "dried blood" by the Phantom himself. Underneath were another black shirt and a black cravat, and over it he wore a black jacket, a good one without the fop-length tails.

After that came more formal wear, with a white dress shirt, white bow tie (a real one that actually had to be tied), and white cummerbund breaking up the relentless stream of black overwear. He was also wearing a black leather sword belt (again, mercifully empty, especially now that he was so angry) that he had found as he went to put the Don Juan pants away.

Starting to cackle insanely now, he practically flew back to the locker room to don his finale, the Red Death costume.

He was only momentarily flummoxed by the red silk hose, but he managed to get them on without any rips. Next came the red breeches that fell just to the knees, where they were drawn tight by a golden cord with a short tassel to accentuate the calves. Erik was pleased to note that this did not impede his movement in any way. (Ah, the marvels of Spandex.) The breeches were covered with black and golden embroidery and red velvet, and they included a codpiece that would have made Henry VIII jealous. Lord knows why Erik wanted one (it probably had something to do with the red hose), but there you have it.

His shoes were (surprisingly) red, with ruby-colored but probably fake stones set in gold above the buckle. Erik pulled on a white shirt, humming a little song about death and destruction to himself as he adjusted the ruffled, gold-and-black embroidered cuffs before getting into his doublet. The doublet was very heavily embroidered in gold with a few accents in black, and with black velvet ribbon where the poofy crimson sleeves joined the main body.

He unfolded a massive red cloak big enough to eat Ohio and fastened it to his shoulders. On the back, embroidered in glinting gold, were insanely detailed letters that would have made Hester Prynne jealous. These said, "Ne me touchez pas! Je suis la Morte rouge qui passe!"

The authoress would have preferred them to say "qui traque à l'étranger" or "who stalks abroad," as in the English version, but in the French novel it says "qui passe," so she cursed herself for having had the pickiness to look up the exact wording and carried on with the description.

By now Erik was definitely crazed. He settled the death's-head mask into place, marveling at how strong the papier-mâché was (Edna kept her varnish methods top-secret) and admiring the cunning articulated jaw. He literally swept over to a mirror. Don't worry—the floor's relatively clean and the cloak is soil-resistant and machine-washable (new feature!). Here he pulled out a massive red hat that would have made Captain Barbossa jealous. It had three giant red plumes and embroidered gold leaves all around the brim. The Phantom was laughing out loud as he strode out of the locker room for the last time.

The girls were shocked by the sudden change from good-looking teenager to fiery demon. More than a few screamed. Erik just laughed louder and flicked off the lights. Those girls who had not already fled saw two golden orbs swoop at their faces and they tripped and stumbled around in the dark.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Erik felt his way back into the deserted locker room and shut the door quietly behind him before pulling the cloak away from his face. He padded silently over to his clothes and began hanging them neatly on their hangers under the annoying plastic bags. He was hit by a sudden wave of depression. It had all been too easy. It was hardly enjoyable to scare everyone if he didn't have to use any ingenious plans or devices. It was too much like the fear that came naturally whenever anyone saw his face. Shuffling out of the locker room in his normal clothes and a fuzzy astrakhan cap, he wondered what he'd do now that he had scared away the only people who ever wanted to see him.

Krista came out of the girl's locker door at the same time, also carrying a few annoying plastic bag-covered hangers. Her hair was still wet from her test swim in the new outfit Edna had made for her.

"Hello? Is everything all right out here? I heard screaming. Why are the lights off?" she called as she reached towards the nearest glowing spot, thinking it was the light switch.

It was actually Erik's left eye, but fortunately she did not poke his eye out because Erik reached out and caught her hand.

Bad idea. Krista had him halfway into a full nelson before he realized what was happening. Erik responded by attempting to throw her using a move he had learned in Mazenderan. Krista countered by rolling through the throw, locking her arms so that Erik had to roll with her to avoid landing in an undignified heap, a move that she had learned from Alanna and of which she was quite proud. They both were using similar combat techniques and they could have continued sparring in the dark for quite some time if they hadn't suddenly been flooded with light.

Jazzy stood at the bottom of the stairs, holding her SHINY aloft. "Krista? Erik? What are you DOING?"

Krista looked down at the person she was trying to tie into knots. "Oh, it's you! Why didn't you say anything? I thought that there was another invasion or something."

"Why didn't YOU say anything?" Erik grumbled, getting to his feet and recollecting his outfits.

"See, this is why language was invented," Jazzy said, shaking a finger under the combatants' noses. "Next time, use your words."

"Sorry, Erik."

"Mgflth." Erik does not apologize.

"You're really, really good. We should do combat training sometime."

Jazzy grabbed both of their wrists and led them upstairs, babbling about the cool project she had been working on before the Professor had told her that SOMEONE had turned out the lights in the pool area. She said something about an experiment that she and Arik were about to perform and she probably invited them along or something, I mean, why else would she be dragging them upstairs? but Erik was too busy wondering why he didn't feel quite so depressed anymore.


	13. Chapter 13: Unlucky?

Disclaimer: I do not own rights to either the X-men or the Phantom.

**CHAPTER 13**: In which the setting changes.

"Voilà!" Jazzy said triumphantly as she led Krista and Erik through the door. Her friends gaped at the image she had created in Chapter 11.

"Nice trompe l'œil," Krista said after a moment.

"Mais ce n'est pas une peinture," Erik said, reverting to his native tongue without even noticing it. "Comment avez-vous fait cela?"

"Can we all speak English?" Scott asked from a corner of the room, where he was standing with Professor X. Nightcrawler and Arik were also lurking in the shadows, or, rather, Arik was attempting to lurk. His hair kind of gave him away.

"Actually, I was speaking English," Krista said. "Trompe l'oeil is one of many French terms that wound up in our language."

"Vous pouvez me tutoyer," Jazzy whispered to Erik.

"English!" Scott warned her.

"That's not translatable anyway," Erik muttered. Seeing Scott's puzzled frown, Jazzy launched into an explanation of how she'd merely asked him to address her as a friend, using "tu;" "vous" was the more polite, distant way of saying "you," but only for the singular form, since it also acted as the plural and blah blah blah. No one really paid attention.

Not even the Authoress, who got up to get a candy bar and got sidetracked by a project she was working on. She got back to the computer in time to see the X-men launch their experiment.

Arik stood in front of the image, holding Jazzy's hand tightly. She, in turn, was holding Scott's hand. It was sweaty. Eww. Boys are gross. Professor X was giving them last-minute instructions.

"Jazzy, you have the return image firmly in your mind? Scott will try to help you if you run into any problems." Seeing her nod, the professor turned to Arik. "Now, don't forget to jump forward in time on your return trip, or else you'll meet yourself leaving. All right?"

"Professor, can I go, too?" Erik interrupted quickly.

The others turned to give him a look. "It looks familiar, somehow," Erik murmured. "Like a dream house."

"I don't know, Erik," Jazzy said. "MY dream house is at least five times bigger and environmentally friendly at the same time."

"No, Erik," Professor X said, "I'm afraid I will have to forbid it until we see the outcome of this experiment. We do not know how this will work. Jazzy and Arik have been going through very rigorous team training, but it is still possibly dangerous and I'm only allowing them to try because this form of transportation could be very useful later on. Besides, they're only staying for a few minutes, long enough to set up the return image."

The Authoress thoughtfully chewed her chocolate bar. Surely Professor X didn't expect the madman to comply? After all, he WAS psychic. Even though Professor X no longer remembered that the picture had been created to send Erik home in the first place, he ought to realize that Erik had some kind of mysterious connection to the image. Then again, Erik was impulsive when rushed. He could only make elaborate plans when he had free time. He probably didn't really know what the heck he was going to do next.

"Ready?" Arik asked Jazzy and Scott quietly. "Making the jump in five, four..."

Without really knowing what the heck he was going to do next, Erik leaped forward and grabbed Scott's hand tightly.

"Three..." Arik was deep in concentration and didn't notice. Scott started to turn his head, puzzled.

"Oh, no you don't!" Krista snapped, lunging forward to grab Erik's hand and tug him off.

"One..."

The five of them vanished. Kurt and the Professor exchanged a look. "They'll be fine," Professor X said. "They'll be back in less than a half hour, at which point I intend to give them a stern talking-to."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The jump took a lot longer than Arik was used to. Usually he spent no more than two seconds traveling the curve of time and space, through strange, unreal surroundings that could be compared to the representation of hyperspace in just about any work of science fiction. Arik didn't realize that this time, he was also moving from one type of fiction to another by jumping into the Leroux novel itself. He DID know, however, that Erik was dragging them off course.

Erik was being pulled back to the time and place at which he had left his own world. The Authoress had plucked him from his personal reality long before any of the events in the book had taken place, and he was being pulled back to the moment after he had left. He was being pulled towards Mazenderan, in the 1860's.

Arik and the rest of the X-men, however, were aiming for a point about 20 years later, after the Franco-Prussian war and the construction of the Paris Opera House. They were, in fact, aiming for the Phantom's lair under the Opera House, which is in Paris, a far cry from Mazenderan.

Krista could feel Erik's grip on Scott failing, and she realized the two of them would be left behind in this nightmarish not-quite-reality if he let go. Kicking her legs against the nothingness, she met enough resistance to propel herself forward and grab Arik's left hand, closing the circle. The X-men were now spinning crazily through spacetime like a ring of skydivers.

None too soon. An extreme force wrenched Erik away from Scott and Krista and propelled him madly towards Mazenderan. Arik, sweat pouring down his face, managed to land the remainder of the group approximately at their intended destination.

Four people popped into existence not below the Opera House, but a few floors up, just outside the ballet dormitories. Arik had got the timing right, at least; the novel was just about to begin.


	14. Chapter 14: Yeah: Unlucky

Disclaimer: I do not own rights to Leroux's Phantom of the Opera. I am going to borrow heavily from it from now on. Please don't sue or complain or whatever. I also don't own rights to the X-men, Star Wars, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or the Animorphs.

**CHAPTER 14:** In which Erik returns.

"Where the heck are we? This isn't the place we were aiming for."

"Shh! Someone might hear you!"

"Good idea. Let's ask someone for help."

"What's that noise?"

A thundering noise of furiously padding feet, rustling cloth, and squeaks of terror reached the X-men where they stood.

"Take cover!" Arik shrieked as the sounds of stampede approached. The four of them hit the wall just behind a narrowing in the hallway, hoping desperately that it would save them from the oncoming tide. In the frantic scrabblings that followed, Krista felt something in the wall give. At first she thought she had broken the decorative carving that ran at shoulder height down the length of the hall, but she had instead activated a strange trap door, which opened before them.

"Down there!" she yelled.

"What?" Scott yelped, his hand going to his combat glasses. "I'd rather take my chances out here!"

"Into the garbage chute, flyboy!" Krista shouted, shoving him through the opening. The others followed. The door closed behind them, which was more than a little unnerving, but they could see what was going on outside through a semi-transparent panel made of some kind of mesh.

Outside in the hallway they had just vacated, a horde of girls in floufy tutus charged past and failed to make a sharp turn; instead, they skidded along the hall floor, scrabbling madly with their soft ballet shoes for purchase, and forming a huge pileup outside a door marked "Loge- La Sorelli" in black script.

This door was opened by a taller ballerina, who was instantly bowled over as the hysterically laughing and screaming girls rushed inside. "C'est la fantôme!" an especially pale girl cried, and the door was shut and locked, leaving the passage bare once more.

"Well! That was interesting," Jazzy said.

"We seem to be in a French-speaking country," Krista added helpfully. "How many of you can speak French?"

Jazzy half-raised her hand, and then lowered it again. "I can read it and understand spoken French, but I'm no good with conversation."

No one else volunteered anything.

"Right, then, we need some kind of translation device," Krista said reasonably. "Got anything, Scott?"

"I've got my combat glasses and my normal shades," Scott said. "That's it. No high-tech translation gadgets, I'm afraid."

"I've got a backpack with ten Twix bars and an empty book," Jazzy added helpfully.

"Well, I've got Audrey with me, so if you'll just hold this, Arik?" Krista shoved a coathanger covered with annoying plastic at him. It was her swim outfit, which she had still been holding when she rushed to grab Erik before they made the jump. Then she fiddled with a charm bracelet, where Audrey, the magical mill, had been attached. Maidenhair had lent it to her earlier for a personal project.

"Hey, Audrey, I'd like four Babel fish."

_Fishes,_ Audrey insisted primly.

"Fine, have it your way. Just give them to me, please!" Four yellow somethings flopped into her hand. "Hey, Arik, hold still," she said, lunging at him and clapping one of the somethings to his ear. She did the same for Scott before he could react.

"Auugh! It's eating my brains! It's a Yeeeeerk!" Scott howled.

"Hey, I didn't know you read Animorphs."

"It was a phase. AAAAH! Get it out!"

"Silence, you fools!" a new voice thundered in French. "Or the purple-haired one dies!"

Turning, they saw a skeleton with glowing yellow eyes slip a noose over Arik's neck.

The message was clear, even to Scott, whose Babel fish had not yet started translating for him. Everybody froze. Outside, they could hear the ballet girls once more.

"Is there anyone behind the door?" someone said clearly from within the dressing room. The sounds of a scuffle and some shrieking about not opening the door followed; the door opened anyway, and the tall ballerina took a look outside, holding a pretty sweet dagger before her. She glanced down both ends of the (rather poorly-lit) hall and then slammed the door again.

"Now," the skeleton whispered through his teeth, "You will follow me as quietly as you can to a safer place. If anyone makes a noise and gives away the location of my secret tunnels, you will all perish."

They had no choice but to comply. As the nightmarish shape prodded them before him down a reasonably-sized but dim passage, Jazzy brought her hands together and started making an image between them. If only she could pass Arik a reference picture of the mansion back home, they could get out of there. Scott saw what she was doing and held her elbow to steady her as she sank deeper into concentration. He would normally supply her with a little light to weave into her picture, but he didn't know how the stranger would react. The gas lamps would have to suffice.

Krista couldn't do much at this point, but she did clap a Babel fish to her own ear, and she leaned forward to give one to Jazzy, too. After a rather unpleasant squirming sensation, the Babel fish settled into place, ready to translate whatever input it received.

Arik was more or less miserable. He had dropped Krista's coathanger and was now trying vainly to undo the noose, which was not getting any looser. At least it wasn't getting any tighter, either. Looking out one of the transparent panels, he saw a farmhouse. That was a rather strange thing to see underground. Perhaps he was hallucinating. His captor motioned for silence again as they moved past the farmhouse; a person was outside, standing next to what looked uncomfortably like a dead body. "It was just after the ballet; and leaders and dancing-girls lost no time in taking their precautions against the evil eye," this personage said as they passed within a few feet of his boots.

Then they were suddenly shoved forward, and they fell from quite a height. A door shut above them, and all sound from above was cut off. Realizing that they were in a soundproof prison, Krista shouted into the surrounding darkness, "Erik! Don't you remember us?"

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ooh cliffhanger. EvilTwin2 is going nuts over my shoulder about it. I know things look grim, but this is necessary plot in order to get everyone down to the lair in the first place, and once this cliffy is resolved humor and happy things will return!


	15. Chapter 15: Jazzy goes Spazzy

Disclaimer: I am not the same eepybird who co-created the amazingly successful and WICKED AWESOME Diet Coke + Mentos video. But I actually know the guy and I borrowed the username idea from him. I still don't own rights to the name, or POTO or X-men, or Star Wars, the Redwall books, or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

**CHAPTER 15**: In which the authoress and the humor return.

(CHORD! Familiar fanfare... Words scroll up the screen...)

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, eepybird ended Chapter 14 on a cliffhanger. Then she went off and had a life or something. How very rude. In her absence, many of her former readers lost interest, preferring to read dependable fanfics or even going off and having lives of their own. Yet a few loyal readers, and the new readers who have no idea how long eepybird has been gone, remain...

(music) (lightsaber sound effects)

eepybird bursts through the door to the computer room, lightsaber in hand. Behind her lie dozens of defeated thank-you notes, ink oozing from their envelopes.

"Banish those thank-you notes to the Postal Service!" eepybird commands her slinkies, which begin to carry out her order, only to shudder and hide as Darth Uglyfloppygraduationcap floats out from its hiding place, backed by yet another spate of blank thank-yous.

(evil-sounding chord, tense music)

Darth Uglyfloppygraduationcap draws a red lightsaber (somehow.) "Salamandastroooonnnn!" eepybird cries, leaping forward to meet the foe.

(Intense choreography requiring no less than five stunt doubles in complex harnesses.)

(Lightsaber hum! Clash! Whizz!)

Finally, eepybird lands a blow on her enemy. Darth Uglyfloppygraduationcap shudders as eepybird's lightsaber flips the tassel from one side to the other. Suddenly, the peril lets out a dying scream and vanishes.

"What? That's it?! That was pathetic!" eepybird laughs, and then the blank thank-yous swoop down once more, demanding to be filled out and sent to eepybird's benefactors...

Several weeks later, eepybird emerges, covered with papercuts and ink, barely alive but triumphant; she stalks to the computer and updates.

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"Kind of anticlimactic ending, don't you think?" EvilTwin2 asked as the end credits of "Star Student Wars: The Graduates Strike Back" processed across the screen in the movie room at the eepybird mansion.

"It was pretty intense at the time," eepybird offered.

"Write, pig!"

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"Erik! Don't you remember us?" Krista shouted into the dark. Outside the torture-chamber (for it is in the mirrored torture-chamber that our brave X-men now find themselves) Erik paused. He still had Arik by the neck, and he had been reaching to loosen the noose and dump Arik into the chamber with the rest. Arik, misreading his captor's intent and fearing the worst, used Erik's momentary distraction to vanish.

Arik was using the visual guide that Jazzy had slipped him, which meant that he should have appeared in the X-mansion just seconds after he and the others had left it in the first place. He planned to instantly return to Erik's lair and rescue his friends; however, this would have been boring and too easy, so the authoress kidnapped him instead.

Erik raised his mask a fraction and thoughtfully rubbed his chin. The purple-haired person had vanished into thin air. That struck a bell somewhere in his memory. A very tiny bell. Very tiny. He shrugged and turned on the torture chamber.

Light flooded the room in which the X-men were sitting, illuminating a strange metal tree and causing endless reflections to appear in the six large mirrors that served as walls. The room quickly began to heat up as the light intensified, and the endless reflections of the tree created the illusion of an African forest under a sweltering sun.

Jazzy went nuts.

It was like giving a kitty catnip. Or giving a chocoholic keys to Wonka's factory. Only worse.

Jazzy absorbed most of the heat and light, inadvertently saving Scott and Krista from sunburn and eventual insanity. The extra energy made her dangerously hyper, and she went bouncing off the walls and doing backwards handsprings while singing the alphabet backwards and giggling in a very disconcerting manner.

"?me with sing you won't time next, s'CBA my know I Now"! she exclaimed as she inadvertently pushed the gizmowidgetdoodadthingy that opens the exit to the chamber.

Scott and Krista, wisely deciding that the torture chamber itself was harmless compared to Jazzy in her current state, fled through the opening and hid behind Erik.

"Swear word!" Erik said in surprise. He had the presence of mind to slam the door shut again, and to turn the torture chamber off. Jazzy made little unhappy noises when the light went away, but she was still charged enough to last for another two hours or so, making it a good idea to keep her confined.

After all the excitement, and considering the unusual nature of his unexpected guests, Erik found himself in a slightly more peaceful mind and invited Krista and Scott to tea in the Louis-Philippe room. "Aha!" Krista said when they entered, recognizing the room from the image Jazzy had made. "Now I know where we are."

"How do you know about my secret lair?" Erik enquired in a surprisingly unaccusatory tone, dunking his teabag.

"We were trying to get here from the Xavier Institute, remember?" Scott asked.

"So it wasn't a dream," Erik muttered to himself. "I know you two, don't I? Are we friends, or enemies? It was a long time ago."

Krista observed that this was true. The pimply teenager had grown into the filled-out, sturdy frame of a thirty or fortysomething man. She couldn't tell if he still had pimples, actually, due to the mask; still, now that he was in her age range, she found him somewhat attractive. He had a very nice speaking voice when he wasn't threatening people.

They spent a few minutes chatting in the madman's sitting room. Erik explained, sharply and with little detail, how he had regained consciousness in Mazenderan with a bounty on his head and had fled with the help of an old friend on the police force. He had eventually arrived in Paris, received a contract to help build the Opera House, and had built himself a freakishly ordinary house underground, beneath the building. Some twenty years had passed for him, while for the X-men it was only a few seconds.

"I guess this means that I'm where I'm supposed to be," Erik observed, finally pausing to take a tiny sip of tea. "You ended up more or less where you aimed to be, whereas I got pulled back by... destiny, if you will." He made a face beneath his mask at the word, but no one could really tell. "I don't know whether to thank you or despise you for returning me to my own world. On one hand, people here are rude, intolerant..." His voice rose, and then dropped and suddenly became tender: "But then again, now I am so close to my dream of a normal little house with a wife who will at least love my music."

"Hopefully she'll love you too," Jazzy commented tartly. "That's the whole point of getting married."

"Where did you come from?" Scott asked in sudden alarm.

"I just opened the door to the mirror room," Jazzy said, confused. "After a while I got tired of bouncing around and the floor was too hard to nap on, so I found the gizmowidgetdoodadthingy and let myself out."

"You just happened to find it," Erik said, skeptical.

"No, I have a photographic memory," Jazzy explained. "I remembered where it was after the first time."

"Very interesting," Erik said, beginning to smile as he poured her a cup of tea. "And Krista, you can breathe underwater, if I remember correctly?" Krista nodded. "Scott," the Phantom continued, "I don't remember what it is you do."

"My eyes shoot lasers," Scott said uncomfortably. Erik didn't know what lasers really were, so Scott happily explained and the two men were cheerfully lost in technical discussion.

"Men," Krista snorted.

"Hey, I like technology, too," Jazzy protested, picking up the extra teacup.

"Yes, but you'd at least set your teacup down first," Krista returned, prising Scott's cup from his grip in time to keep it from spilling on the floor, as Scott began to wave his hands around excitedly.

"I'm an inventor, you see," Erik said when Scott began to slow down enough for a word in edgewise. "Wait here; you must see this!" He seemed absolutely gleeful to have a captive audience. Whenever possible, he loved to reveal the nature of his genius. He ran off and came back with what looked like a blackened helmet.

"This used to be a perfect mock-up of a human face," he explained. "I wanted to be able to light it on fire. I tested it out on one of the firemen not too long ago and managed to scare the heck out of him. There's all sorts of rumors flying through the ballet corps now about how I can change my head for a burning one. Unfortunately, it doesn't last very long," he said, indicating the charred mess. "Perhaps Scott could serve as my Flaming Head until I fix it?" he asked, watching Scott intensely. Scott, perhaps tired from his intense explanation, only raised an eyebrow in reply. "You said Arik would surely come for you soon and take you home, but perhaps you can stay an extra day and help out," Erik wheedled.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Arik glared at eepybird, who was reading her fic out loud to him in the sweetest voice. "Let me go!" he demanded. "They need me to take them home!" The authoress brandished a slinky at him and he subsided.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"And Krista, you could help me with an underwater warning bell I'm designing," Erik continued, fixing her with a peculiar look. Krista nodded sleepily.

"How about bed?" Jazzy suggested. "We're all beat, and I'm sure we can discuss this in the morning. Where in Paris are we, exactly? Are there any hotels?"

Erik shook his head. "Oh, no, I must not allow you to leave. I cannot trust you to hold all my secrets. I'll lend you a room for the night, ladies; Scott, you can have the sofa out here."

They soon reached a satisfactory arrangement and everyone went to bed, except Erik, who paced anxiously for some reason, and Krista, who closed her transparent eyelids but kept her other set open, looking around the room and wondering what was taking Arik so long.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Well, there it is! Chapter 15. I promise that in the future I'll write chapters in the right order, instead of going ahead of myself. That will help me keep a better schedule. I think I might go back and revise some past chapters, because I tend to spend too much time explaining myself and too little time being funny. Your suggestions have been very helpful! Keep 'em coming!


	16. Chapter 16: Spoiler Chapter

Disclaimer: I do not own rights to the X-men: The Last Stand movie, nor any characters, etc. I do not own rights to POTO, Harry Potter, or Wikipedia either.

**CHAPTER 15 and 3/5ths**: In which the movie is discussed.

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING 

This chapter is a blipic, inserted in a completely inappropriate place in the plot (as most of the main characters are actually unconscious right now), designed to explain the relationship between my current fic and the new X-men movie. As such, it may contain SPOILERS. If you STILL haven't seen the movie yet and you don't want to know, you can skip this chapter without missing any Erik and the X-men plot.

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Now that the immediate Erik-is-going-to-kill-us crisis was over, Jazzy had a chance to think about some of the things she missed back at home.

"Aww, man! I missed seeing the new movie!" she wailed. She stomped over to the Louis-Phillipe room and whacked Scott awake with a pillow. "Scott, you saw the X-3 movie during the prescreening, right?"

"Yeah." All characters who had been in the movie had had a chance to watch it before its first release, and then negotiate personal concerns with the producers, in order to avoid slander charges. Angel had been the only one to really get upset, for obscure personal reasons. Scott was upset for obvious personal reasons, but he figured that at least he died before the producers had a chance to make him look like an idiot. Kitty loved the girl who played her part, even though they didn't look at all alike; she thought the acting was excellent, and she'd always thought Bobby was kind of cute, anyway.

"How was it?" Jazzy was completely undeterred by the length of the preceding paragraph.

Scott spent the next half hour extolling the special effects to the skies. Just because he controls real-life special effects doesn't mean he's not in love with computer animation applications.

"I mean, how was the plot?" Jazzy pressed.

At this point Scott went through a complete mood swing and stalked off in a deep sulk. Dang. Krista hadn't seen the movie either, and the two of them were getting desperate for details when two Slinkies fell out of the sky. Jazzy had no idea that Slinkies were the favorite pet of the moderately higher being who influenced their lives. "Yay! Slinkies!" she exclaimed, picking one up and "juggling" it.

"Um, Jazzy?" Krista said, worried. "Maybe you should put that down."

Jazzy made a pretty circle with her Slinky.

"Those aren't normal Slinkies... they might be dangerous..."

Jazzy used her Slinky to demonstrate simple harmonic motion (SHM).

"Put it down and back away slowly... I'm not kidding..."

Jazzy picked up her slinky and held it like a phone. "HellOo!" she said in a ditzy voice.

"You don't understand. There's this person called the Authoress and she's controlling our lives and those are her combat Slinkies of DOOM!"

"Hi, Authoress!" Jazzy said into her Slinky. "Hey, Krista, pick up on the other line. We can talk."

Krista gave up, but not before retreating to a safe distance to watch. Jazzy said a couple of things like, "Oh, I'm fine, as long as we get out of here eventually... oh good, cuz that would stink. How are you?" before engaging the toy in a long, one-sided conversation about X-men: The Last Stand.

Krista frowned warily. Nothing had exploded yet. Perhaps she could approach without risk. She prodded the remaining Slinky. Suddenly, she realized that Jazzy WASN'T talking herself. She snatched up the Slinky, clapping it to her ear in time to hear a strange female voice say, "...and Professor X dies, too."

"WHATTT???" both girls, or rather, girl and young woman, shrieked.

"And Snape kills Dumbledore," eepybird added for good measure. "Hi, Krista, what took you so long? I just told Jazzy that Dark Phoenix kills Scott and the Professor in the movie."

"She'd never kill SCOTT," Krista protested, too shocked to wonder how the heck a Slinky was acting as a telephone line to an alternate dimension. "And Professor X is still very much alive."

"So what happened in real life?" eepybird asked eagerly. "Or at least, your version of real life, which is somewhere between the cartoon and the movie."

"What's in the cartoon?" Krista wanted to know.

"According to Wikipedia, Jean turns into Dark Phoenix after she gets brainwashed, and she kills 5 billion aliens by eating a star, and Xavier installs psychic boundaries whilst having an affair with an alien, and Jean successfully commits suicide for the first time... "

"That is so messed up."

"Are you kidding me? There's probably a thousand subplots going on in the comics. Anyway. I wanna know what REALLY happened!"

"Nothing THAT interesting," Jazzy replied. "Jean spent most of her time as plain old Phoenix. The only difference was that she suddenly had ADHD. She was very impulsive."

"When Scott found her, the two went missing for a few days," Krista added, "but from what I gather, it's because Phoenix was impulsive in the general direction of Scott's clothes."

"So, when did she become Dark Phoenix?" the Authoress wanted to know.

"Right about when Professor X started trying to reinstall the psychic blocks, she went all 'I am the spirit of PMS incarnate,' and she blew out all the windows, trashed a few rooms, stole all the dark chocolate, and flew away," Krista supplied. "That's when Magneto found her, pacified her with a bottle of headache meds, and enlisted her to kill Jimmy."

"Jimmy?" eepybird asked, confused. Krista's Slinky wobbled a bit to convey uncertainty.

"You know, Inhibit," Jazzy said. "The kid who blocks other people's powers. Don't tell me they tried making the movie without him."

"OH, you mean Leech!" eepybird said.

"Leech? Ew. He changed his name a while ago."

"Leech is more like a name for Rogue, anyway."

"So, let me tell you what happens next in the movie," eepybird continued. "Mystique gets shot with a 'cure' missile and turns back into a human with miraculously perfect eyeliner. Magneto, being apparently asexual, is totally unaffected by the innuendo and just kind of leaves her there."

"NO! Arrrgh! She just SAID that's what happened in order to trick the police, who are dumb as doughnuts. She pretended to be helping them and had them attack a decoy in order to find out how effective their plastic weapons were," Jazzy explained.

"Did they ever catch Mystique, then?"

"Pete (that's Colossus) nabbed her. She was masquerading as Logan and she tried stabbing Pete in the back and ended up breaking a nail. So Mystique said she'd go peacefully if we got her an emery board." Krista nodded sympathetically.

(eepybird: There's all these jokes out there about stupid girls breaking nails and going crazy over such a tiny thing. Well, Mr. Joke-maker, have you ever broken a nail? HUH? It bleeping HURTS!

Arik: eek.)

"So in the movie, after Magneto does his Tacoma Narrows impression, Wolverine and Beast jab him with like fifty 'cure' needles. Then Jean runs out of dark chocolate and goes pOstAL. In the end, Wolverine has to stab Jean because he's the only one who can approach without getting flaked into dust." eepybird made a face.

Krista was rather annoyed by the consistent lack of common sense within the movie. "Logan didn't STAB her. He just clonked her over the head. Then Pete flung Jimmy at her for good measure, and when we got back to the mansion Professor X used Cerebro to modify Jean's psychic blocks from outside of Jimmy's range. He was almost done with the sessions when we left."

"Well, THAT's boring. Where's the angst? Jeez, this whole CHAPTER has been a waste!"

Slamming noises and dial tones emanated from within the Slinkies, and they vanished.


	17. Chapter 17: Through Angel's Eyes

Disclaimer: I don't own POTO or the X-men.

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This is a short one, but I advise you to reread Chapter 15 if it's been a while since you last read it.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**CHAPTER 17**: In which Erik's perspective is expressed.

Krista did not stay awake for long. She did not notice when Erik slipped out the door, reached the small boat, and made his way across the underground lake.

Erik only started to relax when he reached the other side. What a day! First he had to confirm that Christine would indeed sing Carlotta's part, then Joseph Buquet fell into his torture-chamber and hanged himself, and now this. The Buquet business had especially startled him, because his first thought when he found the torture-chamber in action was that it was the Persian inside. He had mixed feelings when he found the chief scene-shifter instead. The man had usually been sober and good at his work, but he had also talked too much. Erik had relocated the body to the third cellar, next to the farm scenery, as a warning.

Then he had realized that the noose might draw attention, as it was made of catgut instead of rope, and so he went back and removed it, and then received the second shock of the day at the sudden appearance of the X-men in his own secret tunnel system.

All of this happened within ten minutes. It took another five minutes to hurry the unexpected visitors to the chamber and throw them in; Jazzy, in her extremely hyper state, had found the exit within three minutes; and it took fifteen excruciating minutes after that for the X-men to finally fall asleep, drugged with the Phantom's special blend of tea. When Erik reached Box Five at last, slightly out of breath, forty-two minutes had passed since he had left the first half of the gala.

The remainder of the first half had dragged on, but the entr'acte had been shorter than usual, and so he had missed the beginning of the second half of the gala. He had missed part of Christine's performance. Erik would have been enraged, to be deprived of even a small part of that night's triumph, but she was singing and he had no choice but to be lost in the music. Her Romeo and Juliet in the first half had been wonderful, but the Faust was divine. It was almost as if she knew he was there, watching her; she threw herself into the piece. When she finished, she actually fainted. Erik was instantly on his feet, hurrying to her dressing room almost before the resounding ovation had begun. He had to see her, and watch those two new managers on top of everything else…. Although the X-men would sleep soundly until the next morning, his day was far from over.

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Author's note: Yes, this was a short chapter, but at least it was something. I've been away. Higher education and all that, wot wot. Not to mention a bit of apathy on my part… hrm… anyway, I intend to finish this fic, because it's not nearly as bad as I thought it was, and if nobody reads it but EvilTwin2, so be it.


End file.
